Trying to Find A Way

Well, it is almost 5 a.m now and I am still up, after spending the wee hours researching RV rentals from Reno to Burning Man' My friend, who was one of the main instigators of the Festival, out in the Black Rock Desert, wants to go, too. I was going to fly into Reno and pick up an RV and she was meeting me from SF. Once I started looking into the prices for the RV rentals which are now in special prices brackets for the Festival, I realized that it would run around 2,000 for fees, admission, flight, hotels, etc. Most of them are already booked.  Yikes! 2 of the RV rental places would not rent new RVs for the desert festival and one of them had a "lazy" air conditioning system. Salesman said, they had learned from the past, not to rent new RVs to Burning Man festival goers, as too much damage is done to the new vehicles, sometimes. 

One of the places had their RV torched when some idiot fired a gel fire ball under the RV, one evening, and luckily the fire extinguisher worked before the RV gas tanks blew. Now, that would have been a spectacular event for everyone in camp, and probably would have ended in song and dance from viewers and ex-RV occupants alike. 

So what to do? Pondering all the ways to get there is part of the fun. I know when I get my mind set on a travel destination, it usually comes to fruition. I think it would be a spectacular way to begin my birthday week celebration, culminating on the 9th. It may be that we will have to find separate ways to head there, and meet up in the Cafe on the Playa, which was founded by her. 

She ran the first cafe, for a few years before heading off for her Master's in Psychology. She still gets a free ticket every year. I want to go. How is it going to happen? 

Was looking forward to the music and heading to the dance tents at night, to dance the night away. The 40mph winds and The Ancients (mini cyclones) would also lend an air of mystery, something like in my Arabian Nights dreams, of big moon desert glow, eerie shadows and the drums, guitars and voices drifting across the desert to sooth my wild mind. 

The music for the road trip was in the planning stages and shall continue to be ripped, since one never knows when a little miracle will happen to get one to the next freeway.The Hawaiian dresses and the Indian silk sari's were about to be washed. Am looking forward to the new bathing suit and debating if I would strip off my clothes, when the water trucks came by, as they do on the playa, squirting swathes of water for those who need a cleansing from the desert sands. A trip to the Army Surplus store for desert boots is also in the plans, since you cannot wear anything that would melt on a 130 degree, desert floor. Forget the flip-flops, the bottom of them will turn to paste and your feet will burn off. 

An extreme event like Burning Man requires a lot of planning and also a willingness to let it all loose. A bit of common sense required as the desert is a stern taskmaster and preparation for all eventualities is an impossibility. How well do you sleep in 110 degree weather, no showers, if not in an RV, and you have to pack all your trash and take it with you, when you leave? 10,000 vehicles trying to exit on Monday and Tuesday along a 2 lane highway, which may have a few broken down cars and RVs along its edges? Oh, what fun and adventure. 

I have a love/hate relationship with the desert. Hate the heat and love the way my mind slows to 18 ohms per second/beat mimicking the earth's pulse. The sound of the earth rises and the body slows from modern pace to natural flow. I can hear my heart beat pumping away as I walk across the sand. Do some of my most remarkable writing upon awakening, in the early morning glow, as the sun pumps its heat to the receiving crystalline structures beneath me. As the sweat pores out of my body, my skin begins to glow as the impurities release as gallons of water pour in to keep hydrated. 

Spending time in some of the world's deserts has always been both a trial and a blessing. There's reasons why great sadhus and mystics go there. The desert strips away all your preconceived futuristic plans for your life and cleans the entire mind out of anything unlike your true self. All that is left in the scorching heat, wafting winds of higher temperatures, which may burn your nostrils, is your self. Like an ocean, the desert purifies you and cleanses anything old, from your system. That is why there is a medical tent at Blackrock with Psychologists as many people, during Burning Man, freak out. Drug induced freaking, sure, a lot, however the real issues are people who begin to let go of everything inside themselves forced upon them by nature, and are left without anything to connect to in their minds. 

It is a rich experience. You learn quickly about those who travel with you and about yourself. The desert has that power and she is a wild, extreme, dangerous and beautiful mistress. Few have spent 6 or 7 days in that type of extreme environment. It is not Las Vegas. 

So will I be there? I don't know, as it may be I will have to depend on the help of friends or strangers. Well, it is 5:55 am, now in the Northwest, and it's to be a rainy day. Guess it is time to make some Mate, and think about the 4 days I spent in a tent, out in the Patagonian desert, alone, praying for my train to come. If I do not find a way to be there, this year, then I will have to buy a ticket to see John Mayer & Keith Urban, out at The Gorge. Gotta love the earth choices! Vaya con Dios!

Interlude at John Wayne Airport

A few weeks ago I was flying home to Seattle, from John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, CA.,  after spending a weekend in Venice, CA. While I was waiting for my departure, I found myself sitting next to a woman who had the most delightful smile. As strangers do, we started chatting about what our trips were about. She was 80 and had just spent the weekend in Rancho Santa Fe, visiting her son, celebrating his 50th birthday. As people do, after time, impersonal conversation morphs into more personal, as you begin to sense a similarity in energies. A companionable trust builds and you begin asking questions and discussing things of a more personal nature. 

I have been thinking about that conversation for 2 weeks now and as much as I do not want to write about it, I must or else something inside will keep eating away at me, as it has for a number of years now. It is time to release the poison.

Until our discussion, the realization that it was still there was not apparent as the years, relationships,personal growth and wisdom developed. It lay buried among memories and realizations. I think she was an angel sent me that day, so I could lay to rest this anguish. 

The question she asked me was if I had any children. Answer: "No". She asked me why not? Answer:"Never met a man I wanted to raise a child with." She looked at me sharply and said, "But you are such a beautiful, charming woman, what man would not want to have children with you?" Response: "Thank you, however I never met that man." She asked, "could it be that they were never meant to be the one you would spend the rest of your life with?".  Pause, Answer:"Oh, God, you're right!". She leaned closer to me and said, "Don't worry about it, my dear, someone is here for you. God always sends us a mate, just as he does for the geese." 

We laughed and I thanked her. 

She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled to show me a picture of 4 people. Her children, all adopted. 4 months after they married, her husband was involved in a car accident and lost the ability to have children. He asked her a few months afterwards, if she wanted a divorce. She said, she was devasted that he would think, she would leave him because they could not have children. He was her love. She told him that she could not imagine being in the world without him and said they would be parents of children who had lost theirs. They would adopt. Each of their children were orphaned because the parents had been killed in car accidents. 

Sometimes you cannot get the seat on the plane you want. I like the aisle seat, however that afternoon a window seat was mine. It was perfect for what I had to process. Thinking about her bravery and love, for her husband, and the last thing she said to me, before we parted, brought tears to my eyes. She asked me if I believed in love. I told her I did. 

She said, when you find that one person to love and he finds you,  that is the first surrendering, in a relationship. It is the "playground" for the adventures you will have together. She said you never know what type of day it will be on the playground, you never know who will be out there with you, but you are there with your dearest, and that is all that matters. The second surrendering occurs when God throws you a curve ball, as it did them with her husband's accident. They could have divorced, however, because they had played so well together, everything that happened in their lives since then, stemmed from the first surrender to love. Their love for one another was the basis from which love grew into their lives.

That is wisdom at its finest, isn't it? Glad I could not get a good flight into LAX, that weekend, otherwise we would have missed one another. 

The anguish in me is gone now. It took a week or so. 

 It was the fear I had surpressed for so long, because of mammary ductile carcinoma which visited my body about 10 years ago.  My life was saved by a wise surgeon who was able to remove the bright light, as it appears in a nuclear x-ray and had only to perform a lumpectomy. He saved my life and "the ladies" as he called them.  

Because of it,however, I am unable to have children. This happens sometimes to women with certain types of carcinomas. Doctors may not mention the risk, however mine did,  and, so, it came to be. I was happy to be alive and well, and the secondary effect did not bother me, until I began dating a man, about two years after the operation. We had a few dinner dates, some kissing and hand holding. Then one afternoon, we got into one of those more personal, "fishing-for-similar-goals" discussions, we all have when dating someone new. 

He was a nice guy, good teeth, knew how to hoist a sail, and actually had a career he was good at and he could dance. Oh, ya! Well, the short story is when he found out I could not have children, he stopped calling. I could see it upset him as he could not hide the STOP sign, when it appeared in his eyes. He was kind enough to tell me that it was a "major" goal of his to have children (from his own seed, I gathered), so I deleted his phone number from the address book, that night. (No, we did not have sex.)

Why am I telling you this? Because, there are a lot of people out there who cannot have children because of things like this, and probably have the same worries I did. Guys, is it your blood line that needs to continue? Will it cause you to walk away from maybe the love of your life?

Is it that important or is it the raising of a child, who carries your name, with someone you love,  important?Are you going to require your bloodline continue and walk away from the love of your life? It happens, as it is true  for women who want to experience the physical wonder of birth, and would have walked away from a husband, in a car accident, who could not produce semen.

Just trying to get it out there, that love is all around and anything is possible, as was for that lovely woman and her husband. It all worked out because they loved-- Nothing else mattered.

Being a "beautiful and charming woman", my worry since that health challenge was that a man would come along who loved me, who wanted children. How could I tell him it was impossible, after the sailor boy quit calling incident? To not give someone I love, the one thing they desire, would be a sorrowful travesty for me. Evidently, as she reminded me, sailor man  wasn't The One ;). Her story made me realize that I had to trust in love, and the First Surrender. 

From that love, all else would flow.

Time to Write

A lot of people have been asking me about my book writing project. It is time to tell you about the hell this writer goes through, some days, as I scrawl out the next 60,000 words or so. For the love of Mike, don't do it to yourself unless you are sure you can handle your own insanity for about 5 months. The cut off date for delivery, of my new love, is August 3 (this year). 

So what is it like? 

It is always in my head. The next chapter, the correct format for the bibliography, or what I am missing down at the beach when it was 70 degrees today, in my little village on the Puget Sound. It rolls around inside the cranium, like incessant jabberwocky. The ability to be lured away from the laptop is slapped away, like a mosquito, since I also have a netbook, so any forays down to the beach, or for a walk along the Chambers Creek Trail, will include a backpack with the netbook , water bottle and a pound of organic red grapes. 

Technology encompasses all that I do and there is little escape from The Book. When I am driving, I think about it, and since the digital tape recorder was invented, my car feels like the one that Deep Throat drove around D.C. in, recording his memories of the White House antics of that president, from the past. Nixon? Remember him?

Friends call asking what I am doing, beginning around 7 PM. They know what is going on here and after a while the conversations, may get boring for them, since I do not discuss what I have written, with anyone, until it is done. Then it gets handed over to an editor, and the real work begins, for me. Which is watching bits and pieces, of the tome, being thrown into the Recycle bin, and creating new paragraphs and chapter re-arrangements for your reading pleasure. A most painful process, which can be compared to that moment you see your spouse or lover, move the final piece of clothing out of the closet, once the love affair ends. 

A writer's life is a weird one. I work alone with no one telling me what to do or how to do it. It is a flash of inspiration, an ability to pull out the superlative expression which ties together noun and verb, creating an intimacy between writer's mind and reader's heart which goads me into submission, of this love of writing. 

Where do the words come from and when do the lovers know the right moment to allow their souls to touch one another? That, I cannot answer for you. Only that it does happen without preconceived expectations and absolute faith, in the moment of movement, or the words arrive to create perfect harmony. 

Writer's lives are very simple ones, when they are writing. Quiet, sometimes, and other times I need to have The Stones, or Lady Antebellum or Andre Bocelli singing, Je vis pour elle, with  Helena Segara. Depends on the mood and the mind. Food and drink are secondary thoughts, when preceded by intense concentration. Many times, that intensity expands into another page, or another, before I withdraw from the keyboard. Other times, I slam the top down, grab the Ipod and run out the door, heading along the dirt road, and into the forest, next to the house. 

Sometimes, just to jump into the woods and sit down against an old fir tree, that looks like it has been around for a couple hundred centuries, is all I need to relieve the intensity, or to celebrate an incredible few pages that were gifts from the cosmos.  Just to breath and release the tension from the heart, which benevolently bestowed another 5 or 6 pages of words, without me knowing how they got there is all that I need to whisper a prayer of gratitude.

A book takes on an energy of its own, unlike, any other book written. 

The topics and the seminal seed for the book begins to grow with each sentence and, like a new lover, you never know where you will end up, as you dance into the relationship. Sometimes, the excitement from seeing the number of words written to date, can destroy a relationship with the new manuscript. No longer do I get excited as the numbers grow from 1000 to 5000 to 20,000, in my toolbar. I will pay the dues, for my false pride, once the editing begins. 

I have thousands of words on paper, in boxes, and on thumb drives, that will never see the light of day, in a published manuscript. There are probably 4 good books of poetry sitting there, that have aged over time, which may never be printed, bound and sold on Amazon.com. 

A writer, like any artist or musician, practices for years. Writes, edits, creates crap, creates a work of pure genius, and yet none of those things may ever be known to anyone else but to their creator. Many of us put those works in boxes, or on hard drives, and look at them once in a while, or pull the oil paintings, out of boxes, and gaze at them, then smile or wince. 

I keep mine, like you may keep yours, not because they are abysmal or admirable but because they are authentic. Me, at a time and place in my life, when the authentic self emerged and wrote a story or a poem about something pivotal, emerging from my soul's consciousness. That is all they were then. Whispers of memories which moved me silently along life's path.

Hours? How many hours do I write a day? A lot and sometimes none. Research takes up a good bit of any book and I do not care what you are writing. There are times when I am writing poetry, where I can spin off into a thesaurus for an hour, forgetting the original word I was looking up, as the love of a new word, the way it winds around my lips and enters the world, lunges into the room as spoken word. The promise to self and goal is 35 pages a week, which is facile for me.

Put me on a plane about 100 times a year, or a train or bus and let me stay in hotel rooms around the planet, and two books a year would be easy to produce. For some reason, unplugging from a home base and throwing myself into the planetary, uncharted paradigm, releases the visionary, fecundity imagination inside. The great thing about it is that anyone could be in that hotel room, with me, with the stereo or a meeting going on, and my tunnel vision kicks in and the writing just flows. Writers are not anti-social. We have ears, even though we are typing or hold pens in hand.

So, the life of this writer is variable and rich. If I stilled live in a big city, I would be hitting the streets around 10pm to eat dinner and go listen to music somewhere. Now, the stereo gets flipped on, when I am done, and I dance around for a half hour or so to re-energize and shake all the words out of my head. 

It is a writer's life and although self-indulgent, it is rich and varied and filled with lovely friends and family, who understand there are actions and desires which can be fulfilled, if you are on your life's path, doing what you love, and diving into its depth, without taking a breath. The breath comes at the end, when the creation is complete and through the creation, I learn a little more about myself and humanity. 

The impulse to write comes from my soul, of course. How can one not follow their soul when it consistently bellows one word: write, paint or sing? Am I a good writer? I no longer visit that presumptive question since who art appeals to is a big crap shoot. You never know who will like what you offer the world, all you know is it has to come out and is sometimes shared. I stopped worrying about it, when I read one of Van Gogh's letters, when I was in Arles, France. I sat at a table, in the same square where he painted Cafe Terrace at Night. The Cafe terrace is still the same now, as it was when he painted it. 

In the letters, Van Gogh writes: "My only anxiety is what can I do...could I not be of use and good for something?

And in a picture, I wish to say something that would 

console as music does...The world only concerns me

in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it and 

out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express sincere human feeling." 

So, tonight the writer writes, the wind blows across the Sound, and someone is sitting in Arles, in the same chair I sat in, a few years ago.

I look at the pages written today. Reach for my copy of, The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, and slip in John Cruz's, Acoustic Soul CD. Time to write.

My Heart Hurts

Something strange has been going on today and I just realized what it is now, at 2:07a.m. My heart hurts. Like the fish dying in the Gulf of Mexico now, suffocating from the millions of gallons of oil, pouring into the molecules of water, once clean, fresh, alive. My heart is hurting, unable to leap into joy, today, feeling the pain of so many dying for no reason, other than mismanagement of earth's treasures.

How do I deal with that feeling, now?

Once the resource is gone sometimes it never returns. Oil is the blood of the underside of earth's skin. It is bleeding and if you think that it will not cause disruption of the movement of earth's energy, then you must be one of those people that do not get oil changes for your car until the engine ceases. How much more torture can earth take from us? The more we abuse her, the smaller the planet surface becomes for us to find space, water and fresh air to continue our existence.

I spent a few hours yesterday probing the internet. Reading Mission Statements, of many large non-profits, which are claiming to save the planet. I found many tied into some of the most subversive, multi-national groups on the planet. If you trace the board of directors or see which large multi-national "clubs" formed these groups, you could begin to see how the not-for-profit curtain thins, as the profits made from those who contribute, without examining the masks behind the showmen, running the game are being controlled by those who run the banks, oil companies, and governments. Many non-profits do not have such associations, of course.

I cannot save everything, on the planet, since I have only so much energy and not enough money, to save every living entity, on it , like those so impoverished they are ghost-like, invisible, living in poverty and pain, unimaginable to those of us who have food, roofs and gas to help us move around. Take a ride up into the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, some sunny afternoon. You will come back a changed person. Perhaps frightened, as many do, or else more compassionate and stunned, as was I, at my changed perception of poverty, sick at my blindness to what was 3 miles from my hotel in Rio.

When I walked out onto the street that evening to dinner, and walked past H.L. Stern's, I looked down at the green tourmaline, 22 carat gold ring I had purchased for myself, and felt sick, for a moment. Brazil Avg. Income per year - 2,342.00. The women, who I spoke with in the favela, who allowed me to enter her shack, told us she earned about 20.00 US a month. That was a good month.

I thought about the children of Africa, who have been raped or maimed, because they happened to be living inside a man-made, imaginary line of demarcation, which puts them in one country at war, rather then the one next door, that is without such bloodshed on its soul.

My parents once owned a Civil War hospital, in Gettysburg, Pa, which had been converted to a wonderful, warm farm house, with 2 foot thick, stone walls. It had been a Confederate hospital, and then the Union took it. There was a sun porch running across the front, looking over the pastoral view and our fields. A ghost lived there, in the corner of that sunroom. Many people who slept on the sun porch, when they visited, would come to the kitchen for breakfast and say they had seen "him" again. The ghostly form was that of a young man, crouching in the corner, crying, and his crying is what would awaken them at night.

I would sit in the sunroom, when I would visit from my place in Alexandria, VA., and think about him, wishing him to appear so I could ask why he cried. From what pain, or sorrow, arose his mournful sounds, still emanating since July 1,2, or 3rd, 1863? 75,000 soldiers from one side vs.94,000 from another, on that bloody field. What horrors for that boy, I cannot imagine.

I never saw him. I didn't need to since that house sat in the middle of one of the worst nightmares of the North and the South, the battlefield at Gettysburg, where thousands died, more from wounds and amputations, than instantaneous death. Instant death would have been much more preferred by most of them, I would guess, than the grizzly operations, without anesthesia. For me, it is always the sound of those in pain, or breathing their last, which I always remember, and arises in me the memory of their pain and agony.

Today, my senses where affected by the cries from an ocean of fish and other creatures, screaming to the sky, for release from the painful deaths they are all enduring, inside their home of once magnificent water. Hellish and unexplainable to them, a miasma of death, without warning and no escape for the mammals, birds, crustaceans and molecules once living, now destroyed. How many molecules destroyed, I wonder.

The number of electrons in the known universe is 10^88, which is ten-thousand

quattuordecillion. Just for perspective, one trillion dollar bills laid end-to-end,

at the equator would circle the planet nearly 3,000 times.

Trying to imagine how many molecules and living organisms were destroyed

because someone didn't lay the cement down right, at 5,000 ft. below the ocean's

surface, which caused a bubble to rise and blow out hundreds of millions of oil,

and kill not only men on that derrick, but anything within miles, and thousands of feet below,is truly something we all are accountable for since we all want oil.

You and me are dependent on it, and we need it to fly our

planes, run our cars, heat our homes, and make all those plastic containers

that your printer ink comes in. You know --ink cartridges.

We are using Earth's blood to feed ourselves, and provide our comforts for travel

and personal agendas. Instead of Soylent Green, let's call it Soylent Black.

If you have never seen this sci-fi movie, pick it up this week and

then look at some pictures of what that mass of red in the Gulf

looks like from the satellites.

[Soylent Green is a 1973 American science fiction film directed by

Richard Fleischer. Starring Charlton Heston, the film overlays the

police procedural and science fiction genres as it depicts the investigation

into the brutal murder of a wealthy businessman in a dystopian future suffering

from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans

and a hot climate due to the greenhouse effect. Much of the population

survives on processed food rations, including the eponymous "soylent green".

---Excerpt from Wikipedia]

Where am I going with this blog, today? I do not know. When the screams of those

animals, dying, in the Gulf reached my consciousness today, I became sad,

then angry, then tired of ongoing destruction we all support, silently,

because we "have to have" something which, in order to get it, we need to

destroy the earth's gentle balance to satisfy our desires.

I know there is a solution, somewhere in our hearts, in someone's mind,

that will allow us to live without oil. We will never have to stab the earth,

with steel straws, 5,000 feet long, puncturing ocean floors, or ripping across

Gaia's body, with steel claws to gather minerals, and strip Gaia of all hers.

We are all one soul, are we not? Maybe this blog today will bring some

awareness into your heart. Maybe you will do something to help.

I recalled a wonderful book, I read a few years ago. It relieved my

anger, about my part in destroying such a beautiful body of water, and all that

lay beneath the Gulf, this week, and the pain, I felt for a few hours today.

Here is the excerpt”

Every Warrior of the Light has felt afraid of going into battle.

Every Warrior of the Light has, at some time in the past, lied

or betrayed someone.

Every Warrior of the Light has trodden a path that was not his.

Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial

of reasons.

Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not

A Warrior of the Light.

Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties.

Every Warrior of the Light has said ‘yes’ when he wanted to say ‘no’.

Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved.

That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this

And yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.--

Paulo Coelho, The Manual of the Warrior of Light.

I know I am a better human than I was yesterday, or last week. I believe that

as we move through space at 25,000 miles per hour, I am evolving also in

that energy transition. The overwhelming sense of being barren of any solution, this morning, as I drank my mate, from Argentina,wondering how I could to stop earth's destruction is gone now.

I don't stay in anger mode, very long, anymore. It takes up too much energy.

My joy in life always exceeds my frustrations. I am not a ghost, I am flesh and blood, alive, worthy of love because I love deeply, even though I may not show it

in my actions or words, all the time. Love is there deep, abiding and whole.

The one thing that can change All.

That soldier, the young soldier on the farm in Gettysburg, lived in fear and died,

probably, a painful, lonely death, as did many of the beings in the Gulf of Mexico

this week. I send all of them love today, for it is the only thing I have today to share.

I send love to you and hope you are the one that finds the solution,

or part of the solution to end our dependence on oil.

It would be a worthy offering to such a beautiful place

that has allowed us all a home, a place where we learn to Love

and act from Love.

Do You Need More Than Love?

Some things become clear as you walk along a beach. Sound, relationships and life's purpose seem to flow through my psyche normally walking along a long, sandy beach. This weekend, I spent time, in So. California,  to walk the beaches and found that my mind was not focused on those things,  instead it was trying to answer the question of what is it about people that overwhelms me with joy, inspires me, makes me laugh or cry? The richness of it all, the depth, the passion, the love, the truth was the answer for me.

Their stories of sorrows, joys were highlights for me, this weekend. I paid attention to a lot of stories from people who, like myself, needed to understand that part inside themselves which relies on the rest of us to listen, comment and provide adagios for our souls' to touch love.That is our treasure to one another.

Humans are an incredible lot. We create drama, find love, walk away from love, walk with or away from one another, depending on our fear of commitment level. I spent hours walking the beach in Venice, Ca. this past Saturday evening. Had not been there for a couple of years, and found myself seeing many of the same sights that had been there before. The faces had changed, the products, too, but not all. One thing, I love about humans is their ability to replicate historic memories and conserve them for the rest of us. There is something lovely in the familiar, like Constantine's Gate in the Roman Forum, or Michelangelo's, David.

The Venice astrologer was still in the same building and in the same apartment! When I saw the sign on the balcony, I smiled. A little memory laugh rose up my chakras, as I recalled a night, years ago, when a friend went in and came back with the answer he needed about his girlfriend. I think they may still be together. Familiar. 

I have changed a lot over the years, however, not so much, as I stood in front of Jimmy Hendrix, playing his heart and singing there on the sidewalk. He looks just like Jimmy and if you did not know Hendrix was dead, well, you'd believe he was still on earth with us, looking at the Jimmy-double. I was happy to see Jimmy, there. It brought back a memory of a visit to Hendrix's grave, the first time I visited Seattle, at the Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, Washington.

I parked at the memorial in Renton. There was no one there in the cemetery with me. Not all his songs appealed to me, however, there is a loss for all humanity when a musician dies, as his music rises to the sky with only the air to carry it into the ethers. Notes rising from earth, harmony collectively joining minds and hearts for a period of time, a period of emotional recognition of something in all our souls. 

I opened all the doors on my car, and put on Beethoven's Sonata in C Sharp Minor Op.27, No 2.The stereo volume set to the highest level.

You could hear it all over the cemetery and it was magnificent.

Beethoven dedicated the Sonata to his pupil, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi,  whom Beethoven had loved. The piece came about when Beethoven heard music coming from a house. and knew it was one of his compositions. When he entered the house, he found a blind girl playing the piano. She wished someone would show her how to play the song correctly. He offered to play it for her, and when he finished, she realized who it was. He then improvised the sonata, inspired by the moonlight streaming in through the window.[wikipedia]

I sat at the grave and listened to that incredible, expansive piece as it played to me and the birds, that warm, summer evening, while I thought about a man who had been wild, extreme, creative and gave up his life to the addictions which plague men, like himself, when too much, too fast arises from the creative genius and is sold to the world for the price of a life, his life. 

When I stood there on the beach, in Venice, this weekend, I remembered that day in Renton, and my hope that one day I would like to have someone play that Beethoven piece, to me, alone. Somewhere on earth, which takes our breath away, because of its beauty. Just to sit alone with the pianist and not a word spoken, between us. Just the music, the piano, the light, the fingers, the breath moving from our bodies, and his fingers touching the keys. Just that and nothing else. To walk from that room, together, blinded by the beauty of it all --well, that is heaven to me.

The joy of creation is reward itself. The money, fame, glory is not why a musician composes, an artist paints, a writer writes, is it? Perhaps, the Venice Beach astrologer realized, years ago, and made a decision that the gift they had was enough to be happy.

Paulo Coelho said, in an interview,-- that people think that a winner is someone who is loved by everyone. But as you climb the steps of fame, there's always another side to that. People might be fascinated by you, but on the other hand, those who haven't been as successful are bound to view you with a certain amount of bitterness. That's where the loneliness comes in.--

Maybe loneliness is what overtook Jimmy. It all comes down to a choice and eventually that

choice should be made based on what you really need to survive in this world. 

A man once asked me what I wanted from him and I could not tell him, because he was not the man I would accept those things from, if you understand me. I know now what I want.

I need a roof over my head, food and drink on the table, a warm bed with a kind-spirited, loving man in it, books, art, music. Anything else, any gifts are treasures,given lovingly and with the knowledge they were chosen with love. What is it that you need? Do you need more than love?

Is love not enough or is it too much to bear? Think fast. Act now.

Black Holes Filled With Lappert's Ice Cream

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my car, about to get out and grab some of my favorite Thai Green Curry with Tofu, when the cell phone rang. It was a blocked call. A man asked me if I was selling a Hyundai. I told him, "No, you must have the wrong number." Then he repeated my cell number and asked me if that was the number. Told him it was but I wasn't selling a Hyundai. Then he said, "but this is (and repeated my number again)?. For some reason I felt there was something more going on than someone looking for a Hyundai. I then told him he had reached the Fort Lewis Security Office and it was a secure line.Said that my line must have been compromised and would need to check it out. He sounded upset it was not me, as if he had my phone number and wanted it to be me. At some point we said good by.

The clarity of his microphone is what impressed me. Crystal clear sound as if it was from a sound booth in a recording studio. He had a wonderful voice and my mind raced trying to figure out why I had this very strong sense that he knew me, or had met me briefly,  and was trying to find something out about me before getting up the nerve to tell me who he was, that day. 

Yes, he could have been looking for a Hyundai, however my Agatha Christie-murder mystery -mind clicked in and I wondered why would he call to buy a car and block his phone number? Don't you want people to call you back, if the car is still available? No, I do not own a Hyundai.
I should have asked him where he saw the ad.  Darn.

The call came in at 12:30pm and I was hungry. When I see a blocked number the first thing I wonder is if the caller's first, second and third chakras are blocked. 

If you're afraid of me finding out who you are, then you are afraid of me, right? 
Why? Are you someone I met? I'd just returned from a few days in So. Cal and tried to think of anyone I gave my number to down there. No one, except the car rental company and Paris Hilton's daddy's company.

I wanted to ask him if I sounded like a woman who would drive a Hyundai. I am just not that type of woman. No offense to you Hyund-aid Humans, however I need my all-wheel drive with 5 star safety rating. I had a head-on car accident a while back, and I like to have some steel around me and some power at the pedal.

Dear Mr.Blocked if you need to protect your privacy and do not want to be open with me, please do not expect me to respond openly, while you keep your 5th grade game going on.   

Delving into all the possibilities of who that man is and the purpose of the call has intrigued me since March 4. Wish I knew what it was all about since it all seemed a bit furtive, based on his surprised reaction that my number was a secure line at a military base. 

Hmm, maybe he is AWOL from the armed forces. WOW ;) Shall I continue making scenarios and put together a 30 minute, TV Mystery script? I could at this point. I love mysteries especially with my imagination. It has been fun the past few weeks trying to piece it all together. I know for a fact Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes could definitely figure it out. Miss Marple would have it down in a few hours, too. Maybe I will write a murder mystery this weekend about it. Isn't life fun when a stranger calls and the imagination goes wild? Thank you for calling, Mr. Blocked. I wish you would call back and tell me what it was all about. You have my number ;)


He did create some negative karma for himself, by making me worry because the fuel for my curiosity, inane as you may think, stems from the Monday I returned from California, 3 days before he called. My bank let me know that one of their merchant's computers and POS equipment (Point-Of-Sale) had been stolen in a burglary, and my credit card was one of the numbers compromised. I canceled the card and waited 14 days, until the new one was issued. The FBI and state police were involved so it was a big deal.

So,  if you are reading this, Mr. Blocked, I thought you could have been the burglar. 
You did have an incredible voice. The clarity of your cell microphone, led me to believe it was professional voice software that is how crystal clear the transmission was on the phone. 

So, because you are living in such fear of either people finding out you have a secret desire to own a Hyundai, and are turning in your manly, double-cab pick up truck, with flaps with those shiny naked girls on them, or, you wanted to talk to me and I threw you for a loop, I am attaching a couple pictures of Kauai, which is where you need to go and get a lomi-lomi massage, drive up to Hanapepe to Lappert's ice cream factory and eat some, 
then head down to the beach, stretch out on a lounge chair, pull your hat over eyes, and get some rest, dude. 


As Deepak says, "Black holes are healed by filling them with spirit.
Despite their terror, black holes are just lack of love." 
Here's a hug, Blocked Man. Run into the ocean and release.

THINK ABOUT LIFE: Art and Love

THINK ABOUT LIFE: Art and Love

Art and Love

There is something about art that has always intrigued me. I wonder what it could be? The answer is it is art and art winds it way through my soul like a bird's song on a lazy morning, right before I move from the pillow and begin the day. It is sometimes a soft chirp and, at other times, sounds like a Canadian goose honk, aimed at my 3rd chakra, jolting me out of lackadaisical meanderings, into incisive, abrupt awareness of the infinity of all life.

Santa Fe, NM always seems to satisfy the art reconnoitre, in me, where my ego-self gets upbraided meeting the sacrosanct art of those who are inspired by the hallowed grounds of ancient, Southwest indigenous power.

I love it there. My body feels good, the air is clean and the majestic mountains and secret kivas fulfill the need to escape my 21st century daily life. There are many places like that for me, around the world, however this sculpture of bronze, holds a precendence as a work of art for me, inspired me today, as I was thinking about a completely different topic for the blog.


Instead, I decided to write about an old boyfriend and something I learned about our old relationship, 2 weeks ago. It was one of those opportunities, you get once in a while, when the past assails your presumed conjecture, of what a dinner party will be like in the evening hours. I had not expected to see him, and as we have spoken over the years, since he is one of my sister's best friends, the mild anxiety I began to feel, meant that something was up. It would be unexpected and probably another lesson from the cosmos.

However, it would be the first time he and I would be seated together, for 4 hours, in a beautiful glass, wood and stone northwest lodge, owned by friends, having a party in my sister's honor.
I just didn't know what it(the anxiety) was all about. Come on, now.The universe threw us together for some reason, and it did not give me a clue before I left for the party.


I can handle surprises, even human ones, the thing is it was also the week I had been working through some past remembrances, of old relationships, and what the real reasons were that they did not work out. So, you see, that he should arrive from California, unannounced (as a surprise for my sister) challenged the unassailable reason, which I had embedded into my memory banks, of why we had ended our relationship 15 or so years ago. Crap! Or so I thought.


We had been together for 4 years before that last 5th year spiraled into silence. We had chosen different topics of study. He, the invincible topics of Contract Law and Torts and me, the near-death experiences being researched at Berkeley, and the study of anthropomorphic sound development in Cro-Magnon anthropological studies. Interesting, for us individually, death for the relationship. 


We stopped talking, as neither one of us were interested in the other's discoveries and excitement garnered from them. We stopped dancing together, going on weekend jaunts, and then we stopped loving one another. Silence came quietly into our lives. I wondered, many times, what could be done to dislodge it from our home in Berkeley. It was too late. Our minds had turned away from each other, as the cosmic wheel of our destinies spun into the ethers. 


That night, sitting before the twin fireplaces, in a beautiful room, over-looking Horsehead Bay, something lovely happened for me, which made me realize he had followed his heart and was happy, and I, mine. 


He was talking to another guest about music of which he has an incredible knowledge. Ask him any song title, and he could tell you the composer, musician, who they were married too, who they lived with, when they played which coliseum, and which bands they had been in before and after. 


In the middle of this conversation, he turned to me and said: "Danise, do you remember the night we went to the Cellar Door ( in D.C.) and Tom Waits ended the set and pulled the can of beer out of his coat jacket pocket and drank it at the piano? It was half empty, remember." I did. We had become fans of Tom and eventually, friends -though distant, since we lived in D.C. and Alexandria, VA when Tom was doing his best to make it to the top. I liked Waits and I realized there were good memories between us, because of our love of music.


When I left that night, I had done a few shots of the Herradura Seleccion Suprema Tequila Extra Anejo, which is smooth as silk, and I highly recommend it should you run into an old lover/spouse/etc., unexpectedly. There was clarity of thought as I drove across the Narrows Bridge, home, late that night.

The best part of the drive home was realizing, we had not parted from boredom, we had parted because our lives needed to go in different directions, alone, to pursue our lives and hearts' missions. 

When I walked into my house, that evening, I was happy because another false premise, about a  good, ole' Southern boy, had perished when a happy memory, of times past, converged into a discussion, between a man and a woman, who had once been friends and lovers, with the knowledge we had meant something to each other, at one time, and it had been good.


So, in the early morning moonlight, I released the last male phantom, of my past. 
Sitting on my back deck, under the April moon, at 3 a.m., the final relationship was sealed with jubilance and gratitude, finally.I was now unshackled from false suppositions of why those relationships had ended for me. I knew the truth and it was a simple truth. 


I may be free to love again. Not so much the wild, speculative love of early years. No, to explore with the deep, abiding love born from suffering, sought in wandering and tenderly touched from a life renewed with joy and reverence. I had known men who had been my worthy adversaries and lovers. I graduated from that school of understanding past male relationships. 

Now, it is me, the woman who understands it was all worth it.  I am happy with my life, content with my past,  and can share that joy, and only that, with a man who is somewhere, out there, under the stars, and walking the earth.


He may never show up, is what you may say. 

Well, like the lovely, spiral bronze sculpture above, my wheel of destiny and wisdom turns with cosmic time, through the ethereal, sublime void of space and soul, never to be stopped by mortal fears. One day, there may be a sound I recognize which will be his breath, his heart, his atoms slowly moving across the galaxy toward me. I believe our wheels of destiny are whorling toward one another, and will one day corkscrew around one another, in a helix of consummate exaltation that we were meant to be. However, I do not seek him. He will arrive, on time, when he is ready.

I can understand the incredible joy I feel to know why those relationships ended. It was a mixture of the good, bad and ugly, as we all know they can be sometimes. I had to finally decide to look at what I did to create the end, in them all, too. Painful, sometimes holding onto my denials, however, it took me 10 years to work through it. Hopefully, it won't take you but 5 or 10 minutes. 
It is worth it though. I can breath and laugh again, without fear of being afraid to talk about it.
Your life is worthy of love and joy when you know we are all headed in the same direction. Love and Joy, Art, Music and Books, they are my plane ride away from a completed past. 
====

With beauty before me, I walk
With beauty behind me, I walk
With beauty below me, I walk
With beauty above me, I walk
With beauty all around me, I walk.
In beauty it is finished.
In beauty it is finished.  ---(portion of Navajo Blessingway ceremony)

(Here is a view from my home) Lovely, isn't it?

If you need to get out this mood I have created, go turn up,Bop 'Til You Drop by the Nylons and dance around the house. I did.

The Day of Change and Peace

Today was one of great change and peace for me.

I awoke realizing I had nothing to do, and not only nothing to do, but would try to enjoy the "nothing to do" energy instead of feeling 21st century, humanoid guilt about it.

Why must we always be put into a position of feeling we need to have something to do, by others, by societal screwed-up robotic thinking? It may be true that having nothing to do, for 6 months or 6 years, would speak volumes about your/my psychoses, which would require one of us, or hey, both of us to head into some jelly-fish infested waters, on water skis (once painfully experienced near Yorktown, Virginia), or climb up into Nepal, during an ice-storm, in order to shake our lethargy from consciousness, and realize that our reality is incredible if we challenge our hearts or ignore the screams of those who are stuck in fear.

However, in my defense, the past 7 years my life has been spent willfully tied in to someone else's time clock. Today, I am able to smile at the bunny in my yard at 830 am, while I am still wearing my comfortable yoga pants and my UC Berkeley sweatshirt.

I am not in my work clothes, today, since I left my technical publishing job yesterday. As an artist, I have declared that yoga pants and french cotton t-shirts will be my writer's uniform, from this point forward, and no longer will I require, of myself, to be en-clothed in a politically-correct wardrobe, for the non-artistic workplace, such as a military base. So, first official management decision, for my new life is now signed into law. Only regret is that I should have grandfathered-it into use years ago.

Today is the first day of the search for the words to fill a 300 page book, which will be completed and sent to book agent by August 3, 2010.

Of course there will be interrupts, by life's surprises, while writing and researching the book, however, I am not tied to an unfamiliar and unknown work meister or military-industrial complex general's demands, as of 12:01 a.m. today.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great job since I knew what I was doing and doing it well. I explored and wrote about high-level architecture designs for software, which for some reason, I just had a knack at understanding. However, even I know when the time has come to take on new challenges, like learning new words, so that my spirit soars and the heart is fed.

As I rode around the planet, over the years, I spent lots of energy seeking mystics, healers and gurus and saints, to see if they were what people thought they were or would spend time exploring their energy, picking their brains, or sometimes delighting in the pure joy of seeing them face-to-face.

Always canoeing my energy into places, one might not normally go, helped me to learn things about myself and others, and sometimes even fall into the arms of some lovely man who I would never stay with forever, but, for a time, our relationship became a classroom in learning about caring, trust, and love.


There were other times,such as one day in Calcutta, when I walked into the middle of a Communist take-over, (Calcutta had a communist government then) and had to be escorted out to the airport by a tank, with a group of freaked out tourists, who thought they were going to be blown to bits. (After flying off a 50 foot hight, ice covered cliff in the Pennsylvania mountains, on a toboggan, and living to tell about it now, a tank with a cannon aimed at me, while sitting on a warm bus, is relatively safe place to be for me.).

The bus vs. the tank was tense, for sure, like all tense moments in life, which is why they are called tense moments. Then the stress ended after I was pushed through the airport, out onto the tarmac, at 3a.m and thrown on a plane to Bangalore, with, of course, the same group of frightened tourists.

At that point I would have loved a bowl of oatmeal or a mai-tai, since the tourists were more draining of my energy, then the Calcutta police and Indian Army, that night.

So, it appears I have some stories to tell, although telling them will involve lots of soul searching and, of course, lots of Mate and blueberry tea.

Getting unplugged from the old pattern will take about 3 days, and since the dark of the moon period, starts today and lasts for the next 3, it is a great time to meditate, cogitate, and resolve what I shall do with my time that will lend sustenance and peace to this planet, I call home.

It is a time of transition for me and I am peacefully entering into it. Breathing out stress, Breathing in Peace will be my practice for the next few days. Maybe you should to, as this incredible time of transition, for all of us, in the universe has made itself known in all our lives. When I think of where I was 10 years ago and how much more I love myself now, to be able to not rush wildly into the past, because it is familiar, makes me happy.

I am throwing some things together tomorrow, and heading out to photograph the new nature and baby animals arising via spring energy. Maybe I shall head up into the Mt. Rainier Valley or up the Nisqually River to photograph the new eddy's formed by this winter's snowfall. Wherever I land with the cameras, it will be the right place, the beautiful place, the place of transition and peace.