There Is No End-pOint

There is no end point,
no final destination to reach,
no place and space sometime somewhere else
when the drama, misery and pain of Be-ing
no longer exists and when all that you have been seeking
is finally sought.

There is no end point,
no ultimate pinnacle of success,
no millions of dollars awaiting you down the line,
no apex of the American ladder,
no person sitting so high on her mighty steed,
no ascension of a spiritual throne,
no tomorrow that will be more than this.

There is no end point
no grander, better dream
and no frighteningly good, something different.

There is only and ever this
this momentary beat
and collective pulse
this moment
now
this presence
this love
this freedom.
There is no end point.

This flowing river
is a continuum
with no end
and no beginning
no could have, should have and would have been's
no rights or wrongs
no moral superiority asserting a death-defying dogma.
Its steady current merely carves a path
cutting its swath through space and across time
while simultaneously being held and contained by the banks
of mud and root, rock and soil
of earth and light, shadow and terrain.

There is no end point.

There is no far-off better you
no distant, safer shore to sail to
there is nothing more than this
this quiet stillness
and black void
this cyclical nature of birth and death
and around again.

There is no end point
only the simple repetition of in and out
in and out
in and out
out and in
lungs, breath, heartbeat
human-animals copulating,
Earthbody growing up,
Earthbody growing down,
universal motion moving away from
and cosmic consciousness moving towards.
There is no end point.
There is only and ever this.

And the sooner we recognize this
the quicker the liberation
the more comfortable the journey
the softer the blow
of being these spiritual beings
simply having human experiences.

The faster we come to
the more time we'll have
to stand outside of the monkey mind,
ephemeral feelings and fleeting emotions.
To recognize it all for what it is
simply water flowing under the bridge
nowhere to get to, and no one to be
only this
here
now.

Meet me.

Unmasking the Box

Blank slate,
white canvas
a resilient clay to be shaped and molded
empty vessel, waiting container
a precious metal to be distilled and poured
black as night, thick as day
a timeless thief lies in wait

anticipating

chewed off fingertips
of the artist
the sweet whispers of the chisel
the hard lines and the rough angles
of custom and culture
and a smooth sanding of time.

Indian Goddess
(Kali Ma)
a Frida look-alike
hints of the exotic
tempered with a dull sheen
she's a pin-up without a poster
a Jewish princess
dark features reminiscent of the Moors
she tumbles in fluid and grace
revolving brilliant beams
refracted in the spinning light
a kaleidoscope of color, shape and wonder

dancing

in the exertion and the friction, a heat index rises
from the center out, the sculptor melts the coagulating putty
now, a pulpy mass grey with brackish specks of dirt and grindstone
he turns the palm-sized ball
over and over and over again
in his calloused hands, in his palms of wretched delight
a myriad of possibilities
sits

in wait.

Tales of an Avid Documentarian, part deux

Four Sacred Elements and a Fifth

On the Synchronicity of 21

Last weekend, one of my best friends asked me to capture her performance in a lecture presented at UCSD in celebration of the 2010 UCIRA State of the Arts conference.  Professor Richard Cohen presented a twenty-minute lecture in which he expounded upon "the mystery" and how we need to bring it into academia as a bonafide inquiry of research - outside of the conventional paradigm of scientific data and theological explanation.

The reformance art piece that sprung up around him as he spoke - emerging both from within the audience as well as outside of it - embodied both the subject matter as well as the four human qualities that Professor Cohen chose to focus on as an entry point in which all of us can tune in to this mystery - with, in and through love, compassion, joy and serenity (LoCoJoSo).

Space Child Spirit

The following day, on Sunday, November 21st, I arrived into my beloved community for our weekly session of Dance Church.  I wandered over to our altar and intuitively pulled the #21 card from Stevee Postman's Cosmic Tribe Ta'rot deck.  The Universe card reads: "In darkest space, peopled by stars, the water breaks and a space child spills into being.  Comets and photons beam exaltation.  Quasars pulse rhythmically while black holes whistle and planets drum.  Now, the humble and hard-working Universe can actually see itself.  It looks through human eyes and onto the earth jewel in the crown of the cosmos and exclaims - Ah.... Beautiful!  Welcome, friend, to the Cosmic Tribe.


The four sacred elements of air, fire, water and earth converge from the corners to form our material world.  However, life and her conscious off spring cannot evolve without the fifth sacred element - Spirit.  Spirit is represented by a human space child.  The Cosmic eye gazes out from the space child's heart, reminding us that LOVE is our highest conscious expression.  When he opens his heart, the space child opens to the entire Universe, and within this greatly expanded sense of self, he contains galaxies of limitless potential.  He has merged with the cosmic mind.  His pose and aura reflect the sublime feeling of being the Universe that created him.  In this state, all walls come down.  The small contains the very large and distinctions dissolve into grand swirls of energy..."

Love is simultaneously the greatest mystery of all and it allows us to revel in the great mystery

Tales of an Avid Documentarian

La Escencia Dance Company

Life, Through a Lens

“The creative artist is fundamentally a religious person."  --Minor White

I was ten years old when I was first given a camera to use at my sole discretion. It was fifth grade camp and, although I had spent the summer flying the ~3,000 miles across the country from San Diego to New Jersey on my own solo adventure, it was my first time away from home with my peers. My mother had packed my duffle bag, including in it her point and shoot device.
Today, as I look back through not just my own photographs but those taken of me upon school campuses and elsewhere, I recognize that, like physical movement which afforded me an opportunity to connect to my classmates in a non-verbal way, the camera was yet another tool for providing me access into other people's worlds - an entrance within which I did not have to rely upon the bumbling messiness of the spoken word.

Sabor Mexico Theatrical Dance Company

Thus, I have been a photographer since the innocent age of ten.  However, my passion is rooted, as always, less in the form and more in the process.  I seek to document and preserve pieces of the past, tales unfolding and stories meant to be told.  I am an avid documentarian - it is a vital part of my practice.  So, when Christina Perez de Lock called me up a few weeks ago, asking for someone to capture "action shots" of her newest performance at the Centro Cultural de la Raza, I was only too eager to lend my eye.

I arrived at the witching hour and scoped out my spot in the Centro.  Naturally, I found the best seat in the house - I sat at the corner of the upper right stage where, with one of the transitory walls of the art gallery directly behind me, I was out of the audience's line of sight.  I was, however, directly beside where the dancers sashayed, twirled, pranced and played.  Their vibrant fabrics of flowing colors and dripping passion oozed and passed right by me.  In some moments, the swish and spin of these costumes came into direct contact with both the camera lens and myself.  Together, we all danced. 

As a dancer myself, how do I capture the fleeting ephemerality of movement?
How can I convey and share the passing of space and time with others after the moments have passed
and with this marvel that we call technology?  I don't know but, these days, I am more willing to try than I ever have been.  These days, I simply keep putting one foot in front of the other and walking forward.  It is all there is to do...

DanzArts

MAGIC moments

They're everywhere.
If you stop long enough,
listen with your whole be-ing
and wait
~patiently~
they come...
First, like a trickle of water
dripping out of the faucet.
Then, as a steady stream
of synchronicity.
Next thing you know,
you're pleasantly bathing
in the brilliant pool
of alchemy.

Diving into this body requires a certain
refusal, however.
A denial of what you have been told
is "right" - those must do's and gotta have's.
A rejection of the subliminal messaging
that you have been bombarded by since birth.
An awareness that "truth" is relative and that
those who usually speak it are either crucified,
children, or drunk.

MAGIC is in this moment, n-o-w.
You just have to open yourself up
once again
to its quiet stirring
to its faint pulse
and to its animal magnetism.
Sometimes, you even need to be
broken open.
The monotony and repetition of this
of civilization as we know it
dulls us
it lulls us into a
laconic apathy.
Fight
fight
with all your might
there is a reason
why
the heart is the size of a fist!

"So If You Want It, Come and Get It - for crying out loud...

The love that I was giving you
was never in doubt
Let go of your heart
let go of you head
and feel it now....
Babylon."

These decade-old lyrics, sang by Brit David Gray, now serenade my open ears
as I quietly sit in an Ocean Beach establishment. Immediately, my body, mind and spirit is swept away back to a time now relegated to that fictional realm called memory.

With my mane of thick, brown curls infested with lice, I awoke on my 25th birthday in a sprawling bed in an upper-crust town home in Vienna, Austria. I had spent the night before waxing poetically - over education and politics - with my Austrian friends and their well-to-do parents. I marveled at the luxurious state of my life, even as my six-months spent working the international school camp circuit left me scratching my head in embarrassment. Months before, while living and working in a chalet on a mountain slope in Anzere, Switzerland, my English roommate had introduced me to Gray's White Ladder album. And, there I was, on the dawn of my 25th with the catchy prose playing out like a broken record in my traveler's bed and body. That refrain "Let go of your heart, let go of your mind" arose from deep within the pits of my subconscious - serenading me into consciousness.

I don't know what any of it "means."
These days, I am simply just trying to listen
and respond.
Nonetheless, I still don't "know" what I'm doing - any of it.
And, maybe, that is the beauty of it all...

One thing that I do know, however, is that Todo Mundo has a refrain about "Babylon" in one of their songs. Santiago Orozco and his band of wandering Gypsies will be rocking today's Ocean Beach Farmer's Market.
Come check it out and join us on a street side dance floor with ambling views of a rollicking Pacific. We'll be looking for you...

"Cultiver Son Jardin"

My garden is within

I sow my internal landscape,
churning a rich, nutritious soil
for a long time hidden in the barren shadows
and raking any fossilized remains,
breathing life into dead, organic matter
and turning it back towards the light.

Now, I plant the seeds,
some fertilized, pregnant and plump
others merely too immature for development,
a finger's length down into an amended compost
where with sweat and toil, with labor and love
an all-encompassing darkness will be pierced.

With due diligence and daily discipline
Like the sun's unequivocal offering and the Earth's gentle help
a focused caring and an attentive watering
of passionate purpose and vulnerable surrender
in simultaneous pressure and release, with guidance and support
the divine acts of listening and responding give way
to sprouting seeds and growing sprouts
to thriving plants and planted trees
to the diving roots and an expansive canopy
under which, gently stepping back and trusting
that the universe will offer up
its glory
its sustenance
its bounty and beauty,
this moment ~
n-o-w.

The Space In Between

Brilliant red dress.  Dark ringlets falling on strong, broad shoulders.
Passion dripping as she snaps two fingers and motions for a moment.
Humor is discovered in the unexpected.

Big lifts and fancy flourishes.
An alchemy of repetition and improvisation.
A battle cry for attention,
perhaps.


Yet, as always, it is in what the eye does not see.  It is in the time that oozed, uncaptured and not documented - forever free to roam among that mystery realm between fact and fiction, between here and there.  Between now and all the years that came before spent building trust.  Now, like water, it flows under a bridge and, in a mere flash of a second, your eyes catch a floating reed, plump, squishy and out of place.  The judgment flares. 

Nonetheless, what remains is still there..
a relationship.
A dance between too perfectly flawed human beings.
His strength helped to propel and lift her out of an anxious depression.
Her willingness to let go fuels a dynamic tension.
Surrender feeds a mutual fire.
And, friendship burns...

Here I Am

These days, more and more, I am giving myself permission
to show up.
To share my raw vulnerability, to expose my shadows and to display my flaws.
In the process, I am also allowing my Self to revel in my light, to exude my beauty and to experience my divine. I am letting go, more and more, of my fears
of being judged and "not good enough."

I am making mistakes and enjoying every step of the process.
What I used to internalize as negative and/or "bad," is now, simply, par for course.
I am learning
lessons too vital to be overstepped.
I am trusting that
this moment
n-o-w
is perfect.

I am listening
to what my heart says
to the quick pulses that throb out from our collective consciousness.
I am feeling deeply
as I always have
yet with a quicker response time
to you, and your be-ing,
to our shared dance
as we continue to revolve around
that great fire in the sky
and as we continue to evolve
into the night
into what comes next.

And, whatever that is,
just know,
I'll be there.

Giving My Self Permission: Showing Up, Take II

So, I ran and I eluded.
I hid and I cowered.
I escaped and I fled.
I played the irresponsible, flaky one.

In sixth grade, I began ditching classes with a peer who has
since perished in a car accident. I quit gymnastics and joined
an activity that all the local girls in my neighborhood participated in -
the Vista drill team. I took up and then let go of softball and tennis.

In ninth grade, I wandered around the beloved streets of my local 'hood,
smoking pot and tagging stop signs with graffiti. My best friend and I were busted for shoplifting at the local CVS and then I was arrested for a minor in possession while strolling to a party in Carlsbad. At seventeen, I gave my virginity away to the class slut. I almost even got kicked out of college before I had even started classes - I had to beg to be admitted in a written letter.

Although my headaches, which had plagued my high school career, disappeared while I was at SSU, I fell back into a deep, cellular patterning. Once again, I had found a mutually reciprocal relationship with an action that fed my being. As a Modern Dance major, my world expanded profoundly and my unadulterated joy for pure movement lent itself positively to my life. Nonetheless, I simply stopped showing up. I ditched classes, preferring to stay wrapped tight within the warm confines of my cozy bed. I'd tell my friends that I would make an appearance at their weekly parties. I would ride my bike over to their L-Street house, walk up to the door, hear the revelry and then turn around and go back home. I did not understand my own behavior. It was unconscious and severely painful. Yet, I could not stop repeating it.

Giving My Self Permission: Showing Up

I was nine years old when I stopped showing up.

Gymnastics was my first love.
I took to the floor like a bird takes to the air.
Little compared to the experience of feeling my narrow legs, brown from the southern California sunshine, pounding down sprung-floor mats. I reveled in my agility at throwing myself backwards into space, performing a full, upside-down 360 degree turn and then landing on both of my feet again. It was a natural high that fed an innate yearning located somewhere deep within my young being. I soared in my nimbleness as I exuded power, strength and daring.

On our expansive, elementary school playground, I would entertain my peers with these same feats. "Do it again, Cara!" they would cheer. I rarely refused their pleas. I fashioned myself after Nadia Comeneci, the first perfect 10 Olympic gold medalist in the '76 games. As I practiced in the grass straightaway found in my parent's North County, suburban yard, I would see Nadia in my mind's eye. I would pretend I was her.

Contrary to all appearances, however, my home life - though comfortably situated within the same walls of the same house for the entire duration of my primary and secondary school career - was anything but stable. My mother's emotional health swung extremely from one side of the pendulum to the other. Some days, she was my best friend and the most hilarious of confidants. Other days, she was an evil Dr. Jekyl who flew into violent rages over the smallest of infractions, such as spilling milk on the kitchen floor.

By the time I had reached fourth grade, I had learned how to consciously manipulate a situation. I would return home from school, after being dropped off in the streets of our rolling neighborhood, knowing that my mother had not worked that day and wondering what kind of mood I would find her in. To fend off any coming attacks, I would pretend that I was feeling ill - usually with a headache - so that I could beg for her compassion and empathy as soon as I walked in the door. My attempts, even when failed, far outweighed being chased around a coffee table by a giant, mad woman wielding a leather belt, spewing venom and threatening my physical being. Pretense was the sword I used to with which to shield myself from, once again, being emotionally, verbally and/or physically abused.

One spring day, while at gymnastics practice, my innocent coach encouraged my mother to come over to our class and bear witness to my skills. Over and over again, my coach had me perform the same, basic exercises on the vault and horse. In those moments, something in me came unglued. My eyes welled up with tears as a deep sense of "not good enough" spread out from the core of my being.

After five years of nourishing a mutually reciprocal relationship with this first love of mine, I simply stopped showing up. My parents would drop me off at the local recreation center and I would pretend to walk in through the main gym doors, waiting all the while for them to turn out of the parking lot so that I could veer to the left and head up the hill, where I would spend the hour playing on the Lincoln logs in the park. This pattern persisted for a year.

In fact, as some of you may know, I spent the entire two decades that followed not showing up. The headaches became my only real ailment that, to this day, I still suffer from and the subconscious conditioning of those three little words still play out their noxious tune, "not good enough."
"You're not good enough," a popular refrain chimes.

In Honor of the Season...

Death Becomes Me...

Wasted moments,
spent fretting
over what to wear
what to think
and what to say,
death becomes me.

Wasted words flung haphazardly
into the chaotic drums of
empty ears.
Wasted moments, wasted ways,
the wasted wilting
and we turn back
towards the Earth, towards the source
from where it came from itself
from its own
wasted wilted withering.

With every breath
spent in solitude in an open
airy breathy silence
death becomes me.

Another wasted day
spent pulling in,
caving, hoarding
contracting and
restricting
death becomes me.

Another void
of choke infested streets
of mindless chatter and the
pitter patter of feet running
and skimming along the delusional paths
to freedom and independence.

Wasting wasted
adding to the piles
of cheap plastic crap made in China or Mexico
or Sri Lanka but surely it is not the States
the lawn chairs, am/fm radios
and other Wal-Mart grade land-filling shit
wasting away in piles the size of small department store buildings
flung like cancerous tumors into the backyards of our neighborhoods
into the family rooms of our homes
into the very heart of our animal nature
turning our wilting ways
and our wasted days
into mindless chitter chatter
and our running feet sent a pitter-patter
on these streets to nowhere.
And death becomes me.