MAMA

Standing in our collective kitchen, she looms over a warm stove preparing a hot meal
as her grandchildren bound at her feet.  A heavenly aroma of herbs and oil fill our home, as SA and the band practice their repertoire in the other room.  The drum kit beats a rhythmic tune as music pours out of the front door and on to 22nd Street.  On the grass in the front yard, a 13-year-old and myself attempt to bump, set and spike a volleyball - mainly just sending the ball haphazardly flying over the metal fence and onto the awaiting cars parked along the curb.  It's a lot of laughter and a little exercise.  I tell her that I wish we all lived together like this ~ just as it was meant to bee.

On these brilliant summer mornings at this end of July, we sit together in the alcove, drinking from dainty tea cups thick, black Armenian coffee.  I gesture my cup and saucer to her, gently requesting that she do as we have done since we first met just a few months back.  Taking the pink ceramic cup from my hand, she turns it over in hers while reading the grains as they lay dry and in a myriad of patterns within the now empty vessel.  "Did you cry?" she drawls in her thick accent.  "Not yet," I respond, speaking to the fear that sits deep in my being and, of which, my cup from day's past pointed out.  "I see that you have broken through.  There is an opening, a movement, a shift," she tells. 

She shifts the weight of her curvaceous body while we sit together on the black and white futon.  Her only daughter bounds down the wooden staircase, ready for work.  "Morning," she coos, as she munches on a yellow banana.  She is my dearest of activist sisters.  We've only lived together for a few months - however, I can't imagine living a day without her.  She gives to me what I so easily give out to others.  "I'm proud of you," she'll sweetly chirp.  "I love you.  How are you?"  Without being asked, she offers me assistance in my ongoing endeavors, like editing my resume and cover letters, as well as holding deep space for me to easily share the daily triumphs, nuances and failures that make up my life.  Our divine friendship a gift from God and a root that allows me to grow up and out, expanding my once-furrowed brow and inspiring me to reach beyond my own self-perceived limitations.

Everyday, I rise early and tend to the chickens.  I sing their names, replenish their water and give them more food by way of the vermicompost pile.  While my skin soaks in the rising sun's rays, my eyes greedily take in the languishing garden - soon, I will be knee deep in soil and seeds, in canning and preservation.  Not yet, however.  Now, there's just this - a reaping of all of the joy that my diligent spirit has spent years sowing.  

And, my sister's mama's words echo in my bodymind, as the vision of her head bent over my teacup recedes into the distance of my memory. 
"I SEE LOVE."

(Celebrate Lammas Day and the Full Moon!)

HOPE

This is a story about a time when hope was nearly lost.

When a people sat bankrupt, vacant hearts slowly pulsing.  Eyes glazing over with an insatiable hunger that saturated fat and corn syrup could never fill.  This is a story about prisoners to flat screens with fingers like the beaks of chickens attempting to peck their way back.  It is the tale of unwelcome guests, anxiously contained within the security of skin and bone, while the hand of time rhythmically ticks off unbearable hours.  Once resilient forms molding into soft couches in echoing homes with unlocked doors and where the pop from a medicine pill container is their only solace.  "Pop!  Pop."  Eerily silent, but for the gnawing drone of black boxes clicking their way through hundreds of cable channels.  "Click, click, click.  Pop!"

This is a story about a time when oceans were rising and ice melting.  "Pop.  Pop.  Plop!"  It is the tale of when exhaust and fumes filled a night sky, blurring out ancient mythologies of Cassiopeia and the Big Bear, of Orion and his faithful dog.  It is a a story about a time when a great hush nearly swallowed a people, when the drum beat faded and the dance set in the far-off distance.  "Click, click, click."  It is the tale of a madness that took hold of cells, devouring tissue, eating flesh, cancers like wildfire spreading throughout a decaying EarthBody.  It is the tale of disappearance, when the Pinta Island Tortoise, the Western Black Rhinoceros and the Eastern Cougar were declared extinct.  Their carcasses now precious matter to a depleted soil, bones to be dug up and recovered in whatever is to come next by whomever is to follow.  This is a story about a time of the great dying off.

And, this is also a tale about redemption.  

When the writers and the poets, the singers and the musicians, the artists and their muses, emerged from the four-walls of their studios, beckoning to their now mute neighbors to join them once more around a blazing bonfire for evenings of spoken word and S'mores, for convivial laughter and shared moments.  This is a re-imaging for when the gardens of our collective soul were once again tended to, soft hands growing calloused and sore above wooden tools and reverberating Djembes, pasty skin becoming bronzed in a summer sun, thigh muscles protruding from feet pounding into a raw Earth.  "Dum, dun, dik, dun.  Dum, dun, dik, dun.  Dum, dum, dun, dun.  Dik, Dik.  Dun."

This is a tale about when the winds of change blew across the hurting, faning the flames of transformation and laying waste to the dis-ease.  It is a tale of redemption discovered precisely in the loss, just as a decimated forest needs fire to grow, just as rebirth follows destruction.  It is a tale about a time when each individual feather re-trained its gaze, recognizing that its brilliance lay not in its mere singularity but rather in the outstretched plumage and colorful fanfare of all of the parts of its whole.  This tale, like the round behind of a strutting turkey, stands purposefully on an edge.  Precariously balanced on the precipice, she sways her voluptuous hips from side to side as her piercing vision locks in on a harmonious future.  This is a of story of when our warbling bird song of love emerges once more, a shrill call to arms from the warmth of our once barren breasts, as the slithering snake of evolution glides along the desert floor below, reclaiming his rightful pursuit of our hand.

Ichibod and Distance, Osiris and Isis, Eternal Woman and Revolving Man, brother and sister, Twin Flames, together once more.  "Click, click.  Pop!  Dum, dun, dik, dun.  Dum, dun, dik, dun.  Dum, dum, dun, dun.  Dik, Dik. Dun."

Notes from an 07/29 Sherman Heights backyard where the "Art of Storytelling" is revived.



 

HERE

guitar chords strum,
as a heavenly voice croons softly
in the other room,
i've only met him on occasion.

brakes on the bus groan, pulling to the curb
on a busy market street, riding down past the liquor store
where a torero's mural hangs,
lucid in an exhaust filled city street.

sunlight streams in, warming our space,
this place, where music and melody, where
divine femininity beckons and calls,
ringing like a fine china, calling like a soft
purr. 

in the distance, the cement pillars of a coronado bridge
root us into the terrain, anchoring our story -
this now - this rise of all that is pure, magical
and sweet as the way once more.

languid, like honey, and draped in red, her amazonian
warrior nature rises from the dilapidated soil.  her flowing
curves hugging the intersection of earth and sky,
civilization and art.  true beauty once again reigns,
and i remember...

ROCK the 4-Letter Word

Even Golden Hill hipsters wax philosophically on the topic

It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from or what language you speak,
we all want the same thing.

LOVE ~

And, IT'S SO EASY.

All we have to do is open our arms up wide,
and say, "Yes, And?"


LOVE MORE
&
BEE HAPPY.

(It's that simple.)

enDurANCE

(This article has been re-posted from my blog. 
It's a response to why I write, talk and live the way I do.) 

The ability to endure is a universally accepted definition of sustainability.  At least that's what Wikipedia says, so it must be so.  Here in San Diego, we have yet to collectively agree upon a definition of what sustainability looks like for the 3.1 million people in this specific region.  On this scale, is sustainability possible?  If so, how will we endure given our current paradigm in which 80% of our water is imported from the Colorado River?  What will happen when our city wells run dry?  Or, when the cost of what should be a basic human right is no longer affordable by the masses?  How will we survive when global warming, droughts and, thus, a lack of water have been turning the Southwest into a blazing inferno for the past decade?  

I know, these questions are seemingly too esoteric to answer - let alone ponder - and, here in southern California, we'd rather focus on the short-term of our tans, waves and weekends, while leaving the long-range planning for the generations who are to follow, anyway.  Yet, the ability to endure is affecting each and every one of us now.  For every four of us, cancer is eating one of us alive - from the inside out.  Today, our American young people are, more and more, being diagnosed with diabetes type II in childhood.  Heart disease is killing us and depression is causing great suffering among our family members, neighbors and friends.  We're sick and we feel hopeless.

I know the feelings well.  I too once succumbed to the gnawing ache of depression.  My emotional state began to wreak havoc on my physical state and, for the first time ever in my short life, my pap smear came back with an abnormality.  I was stuck in the fast lane of anxiety with shallow breath and an inability to quiet the never-ending barrage of thoughts tormenting my mind.  I felt hopelessly trapped in skin and bone.  I couldn't eat.  I lost so much weight that I looked pinched and thin.  I was miserable and I really believed that there was no way out.

However, I am not typing this to preach about alternative procedures, holistic treatments or, even, about the food we should be putting into our bodies, the air that should be less thick of carbon dioxide,  the water that should be pure of toxins and the amount of radiation that should be penetrating us daily.  Our culture and western civilization as we know it is now on a fast track, headed in a direction that we are all sure to find out about sometime soon - it is only a matter of time.  Rather, I am writing this to share that I now, honestly and wholeheartedly, believe that our ability to endure, our sustainability, is deeply rooted in each other.  You, me, us - we all sustain each other.  With our hugs and our kisses.  With our reaching across the great divide of fear and unknowing and extending a warm hand in greeting "Hello" or in offering help to a stranger in need.  With our listening ears and our feeling hearts.  With our abilities to be present - it is the best gift we can give, after all.  

True sustainability lies in the warm, dank soil of our souls where all we truly need is to be deeply held, and fervently loved.  True sustainability is found in the forgiving eyes of our dear ones and in the welcoming embraces of our community members.  True sustainability is letting down our guard and allowing our vulnerable, naked truth to be witnessed and expressed.  True sustainability is here, now.  True sustainability is the notion that "You Are Perfect" just as you are - even with all of your human flaws and weaknesses.

 

To the contrary, true sustainability will not be discovered within the antiquated walls of a crumbling classroom while students sit in bored silence.   Rather, it will be found in the recognition that the teacher is simultaneously the pupil, in the working together, side by side by side, and in the sharing of all voices equally.  True sustainability will not be found in purchasing eco-conscious products while supporting a still-green economics.  Rather, it will be found in acknowledging that what we have right this very moment is enough.  And, true sustainability will not be located in the eco-tourism vacations to neighboring lands.  Rather, it will be found in sitting down to a daily tea with your elderly neighbor, in smiling at a passing face, and in breathing through the uncomfortable rush that tells us to do otherwise.  Yes, I do speak from experience - at least where my health and well-being are concerned.

After my mental health breakdown, I re-committed myself to both the language of the dance and the same loyal community - week after week and year after year.  The anxiety and depression eventually dissipated.  Meanwhile, I returned to see my gynecologist and she found nothing but a tilted uterus.  Nonetheless, I remain vigilant - the garden of my soul requires much nurturing, care and work.  

It also needs you.

 And, it needs you to churn, till and rake your soil, as well.  

 In these coming times, let's sustain each other.

DUST settles, MIST clears

"LOVE
tickles my throat, captures my fancy and grabs me happy
by the horns, by the hope, by the biddilywiddilywoo don't you?
know the way.
to sesame street?
where the air is sweet?
and the grass is high.
i'm going to take you there to where we can't stop the beat the rhythm
the you the me i'm going to take you there where life is pure where innoncence
exists as a standard as a way of being as a you as a me as a we we are we
we are one we are you we are me we are we we we we are we are together in this
now without a rope, without a pulley, without a safety net carefully lowering us back down
into the abyss, into the cavernous darkness, into the place where I forget and I become
lost, wandering, alone, confused, lonely, separated, isolated, waiting, needing,
lost so lost.
Waiting, searching, for you, for me.  For within, is without and without me, I know not.
Without you, I stumble and stoop, to the grave, to the ground, to my knees,
crawling like a baby, learning how to walk once more, learning how to sing
this song that is in my heart, that begs a release, an outlet, a letting go of all that once was,
and an embrace of all that could be.  A wanting, a willing, a waiting, you, me, a waiting, our
union, our return to the one great moment, this here and now, this tribal modernism,
this exact tale of how we came to be in a time when all was lost, when hope was gone,
and madness rife, when illness almost swallowed us whole in its great captivity and we refrained,
we held back, we resisted the suffocating call, the deafening pitch, the hazy fog it lifts
unveiling a mystery, the magic foretold the alchemy a simple process of looking at all of the shit
all of the you and all of the me that just doesn't work, that just isn't is, that just won't do and willing a way, wishing a well us well now in this exact moment when the dust settles and the mist clears
the dew like a crystal clear looking glass rises taking our collective we
our uplifting he and our rising she
and screams and shouts,
"This Is It.""  ---chc

"COMMUNICATION IS THE BEST LUBRICATION"  --a.

Notes from a twenty-second street house on the twenty-second day of July.
When we gathered ~ always, gathering...

two by two

twenty-two
a master builder
twenty-two vials of anti-venom
twenty-second street
twenty-two years old
twenty-two women gathering
twenty-two people partying
twenty-second of the month
on the last twenty-second of 2012 a new world begins
twenty-second

"The Master Number 22 symbolizes the principle of precision and balance.  When it senses its full capacity as a 'Master Builder', it can achieve what is hardly imaginable.  The 22 can turn the most ambitious of dreams a reality.  It is potentially the most successful of all numbers.

It has many of the inspirational insights of the 11, combined with the practicality and methodical nature of the 4 energy.  It is unlimited, yet disciplined.  It sees the archetype, and brings it down to earth in some material form.  It has big ideas, great plans, idealism, leadership and enormous self-confidence."  from numerology-thenumbersandtheirmeanings.blogspot.com/2011/05/number-22.html

(because he says it BEST)

Where Everything is MUSIC
by Rumi

"Don't worry about saving these songs
And if one of our instruments breaks
It doesn't matter
We have fallen into the place where everything is music

The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere
And even if the whole world's harp should burn up
There will still be hidden instruments playing

Stop the words now
Open the window in the center of your chest
And the Spirit flows in and out."

BUOYANCY
"Love has taken away my practices,
and filled me with poetry.

I tried to keep quietly repeating no strength but yours,
but I couldn't.

I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind,
and remember those things?

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself,
that's how I hold your voice.
~~~~~~
So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck we could have.
It's a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.

We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness around you,
the buoyancy!"

Rumi,
my beeloved,
keeper of the sacred flame en mi corazon...

i'm not your FREE-Da

A graduate school peer just inquired if I wanted to perform in Denver this fall.
"Sure," was my immediate response.
"Great, we need someone to play a bouffon/butoh Fridah Kahlo with the pins in her cast and a sugar skull mask," she typed.  "While very serious opera singers sing German art songs about love, betrayal, and dead babies."

Sounds killer and "Frida" is a title that I've, perhaps, become too used to wearing. 

"We need someone to dance the life of a woman whose career was more important than her marriage and her "life" and she uses her life to fuel her art." 
"Oh."

I have already wished Diego on his own way in this lifetime. 
Now, I think I'll cast Frida off, too.
Maybee, I'll just take my classmate up on her offer to be her editor in Denver....

ROOT

Because...   

I beelieve that we are biologically hard-wired, like HoneyBees, to know exactly how to organize ourselves so that we may exist in a state of harmony and balance.

I am most radiant, alive and free when I am just bee-ing me.

I want you to just bee you - in all of your brilliance, madness & glory.

I feel that it is through our remembering how to Just Bee with ourselves, each other and this planet that we will thrive.

I understand that it is through acts of Community, Communication & Regeneration that we will all flourish.

www.just-bee-you.com

Classes, workshops and events for sinking deeper into the sweetness of LIFE

On Sensuality & Intimacy

A Sacred Act: (photo from:)

I just arrived back into a volcanic cafe on a golden hill after chiming in on a conference call with my tribal sisters; space held by co-creative leadership program, Tribal Truth.  The topic was "Sensuality & Intimacy" and the feelings were that it is through innocence, authenticity, connection and essence that we tap into our true, collective brilliance; which are our "selling-points" as 21st century entrepreneurs.

We spoke of how we can forget to be in relationship with our other senses, like sound, touch, taste, smell and sight, as well as with the Earthly environment found around us.  And as to how this results in the loss of a biological necessity, known as pleasure, as well as the simultaneous creation of a cultural story that perpetuates a world fearful of sensual contact and greater intimacy.  

We discussed how we can allow the thoughts and ideas in our minds to more often guide us; hence, we refuse to exist in this moment, now.  As a result, we keep ourselves isolated within an unknowable future and the mysterious past.  We forget to surrender to the unknowing and we resist the mystery.  

Two reasons why we experience disconnection from our bodies and our hearts are shame and guilt.
By giving voice, over the conference call, to the physiologically-stored, muscle-memories of sadness and pain that come with holding on to a deep sense of unworthiness, we experienced the feeling of a shared release.  Together, we dropped into our breaths where we met each other through the phoneline and where we each became acquainted with ourselves - with our heavy breathing, and fogged breath, that was reflected back to us by our own, muted, cellular phone devices. 


Then, we brought it around to the Root Chakra when we actively inquired as to how can we can apply the brilliance of our surrender - of our opening; our shining, & bright sex beaming; our clean slate, innocent, joyful, extending, offering Selves - to this value, so that we may receive the bounty, abundance and capital that will naturally flow - as stated by one of the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, noted by Deepak Chopra,   
the law of attraction.

And I realized ~ I FORGOT...
the other half of my millennium-old dance.


How about you?
Join in our conversation.
Lead the next collaboration call.
Have a topic you want addressed?
Suggest it and LEAD. 


JOIN TRIBAL TRUTH
where women are co-creating the new paradigm of feminine collaboration
 

$hit

"Most of my writing is $hit," I flippantly state, with a wave of my hand.
"No, it's not.  I like your writing," he responds as a burgeonging warmth of knowing spreads across
my belly.

For too long, I refrained from intimacy because there was always some concocted reason for "No."  "He doesn't make me laugh."  "I don't feel it in my primal, animal sexuality."  "We're just friends."  And on and on the list went.  It wasn't until I finally allowed myself to engage in a long-term relationship that I realized my refusal to engage was simply based in delusion.  Personally, I had mistakenly fooled myself into believing that my $hit didn't stink.  "Ha!"  As a result, I wasted too many precious years spending too much time alone.

It is only through sharing my human frailty, my weaknesses and my contradictions with others that I am offered experiences of true intimacy.  Which, really, is just my allowing for me to know myself deeper.  Of course, acknowledging this doesn't necessarily make my path any easier.  Gratefully, these days, I'm trusting more and more what I'm experiencing, especially in terms of my sensations and feelings.

Our multi-dimensionality of senses is always a great gauge.  Take smell, for example - it's a huge indicator of pheromones and, personally, of my natural biology talking without my messy mind getting in the way and fu@king everything up.  Last summer, the premise of possibility danced excitedly between a new friend and myself.  As we were getting to know each other, my authoritative nose decidedly picked up an immediate scent of "absolutely not."  In his and my continued conversations, his words gave voice to a life lived rife with fear.  I know myself well enough to know that my fearlessness/courage is of extreme value and cannot be comprised.

Another indicator involves my ex-boyfriend, who is moving back down to Mexico to live with his fiancee at the end of this summer.  I now experience a similar sensation in his and my continued dances.  Sure, I love the man - he's a great dad to our dogs - and, when we hug, my trusted olfactory flatly states that the past is exactly where it's meant to bee, over and done with.  I wouldn't say that the smell is quite $hit-like, but it's enough to put me off on pursuing paths that lead anywhere but to a platonic nature.  And, I like to think, that this is just perfect.

FREE(dom)

Independence Day 2011

"Hmmm..." I thought to myself, after departing a community-filled event of live music held at a pocket park in Leucadia where children ran around and parents sat enjoying a late summer sun.
"I have three options," I ruminated, as I warmed my chilled body by finally peeling myself out of my wet swimsuit.
"I could either:
A.)  Go to that party where I'll bee celebrating a past with no future;
B.)  Go home, pick up the latest version of crack that I've been reading (the Shades of Grey series)
and, thereby, do what I have always done (which is to choose the safe route);
or C.) Take a risk and text him to see if he'd enjoy my company."

PAST.  PRESENT.  FUTURE.
It's always an option.
Which do you choose?

Tomorrow, we celebrate our Independence once more.
Most of the time, the 4th of July simply leaves me questioning how we can possibly know what freedom is when we've been brought up to believe that it's neon-lit grocery store aisles, over-the-top consumption and fireworks. 
WHAT DOES "FREEdom" LOOK LIKE TO YOU?

Nonetheless, I've been preparing ahead by building towards my own independence
and I plan on returning to visit my senior citizen friends for their annual concert series. 
Spending time with our elders in music, movement & meaning is certainly one way that I access FREEdom.

And, so is choosing what's REAL over what's popular.

So, most of the time, I like to think that I can reflect on the past as a means with which to move forward while envisioning a future that I whole-heartedly beelieve in.
Perhaps then, one day, I'll end up right here, right now.
(Write here, write now?)
Who knows?
Only time shall tell.