Destination Nowhere
From A To Zzyzx!
I. Am. A. Desert. Creature.
Definitely an 'obsessed tourist' kind of place but you get here- and that all slips away. The grebes, dragonflies, cracked playa and lava flows-- are all far more interesting than any modern-ish structures that litter the water's edge . This place is an ancient spring, a gathering place going back in time, making it possible to traverse the landscape with zealots and shaman, the Spaniards seeking silver and indigenous nomads.
Burying Someone Alive?
When Life Begins After No Contact
By bury alive, I mean to simply let go of toxic people. Don't wait until one of you dies to end an unhealthy dynamic. All we have is the here and now. Jealousy, projections and negativity coming from an individual in your life? In your family?
Walk away. It's 100% ok to take care of yourself, set healthy boundaries and thrive. Breaking the cycle of abuse can be a difficult path, but your children will thank you. When you wish to create a new and loving environment for yourself, blissfulness follows. Listen to your heart. Be the change you want to see in the world, be like water...
*If you stay at The Madonna, ask for a vegan room, they will accommodate you, I found out the cattle ranching history after staying there.
PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY 2015
Forever And A Day....
No cafes, no Americana, no recognizable logos or familiar haunts. Seeking inner self, autonomy, universal truths and historical undercurrents, we found every architectural folly, took every side road, left every stone untouched while we left every stone unturned.
The Missions... the California Coast... the Madonna Inn*... Big Sur...
Current Mood . San Francisco
Bayside
We drove to the waterfront at sunset but found the fog rolling in. Airplanes broke up a nebulous skyline, blinking lights cutting through with outstretched wheels skipping, landing beyond a parking lot full of drifters and tourists. This Cat was watching Seagulls from the driver seat.
"Sitting on the dock of the bay..."
-Otis Redding
Deserted In The Desert . Going Back In Time
Not Lost But Found
The Places In Between as Kylie calls them... the spots that make you see spots, the darkest corners where Black Widows will bite you and friendships will find you, leaving that world you don't need just behind you...
The World Is A Canvass
Writings On The Wall
When you see a place with no art, no murals, and no creativity, no writing on the walls... what does it mean? When we divide the red states & blue states it's easy to see what makes them different, especially on the surface. Problems get bigger for communities when there's no place for ideas to grow.
Urban areas tend to be collaborative hubs, diverse and unique at the same time. Sharing ideas and cultures is the norm, innovation rules and the arts are supported in earnest- even the darkest alleys come alive with vibrant paint. To make the world a better place, please support the arts where you live, and always, always- stop to appreciate the beauty around you no matter where you are.
“A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when absolute rule shall cease.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell
Despite my having grown up the only child of an artist, I've always known that calling oneself an artist can be a subjective thing. Art and humanity are as sure as the sun shining but there are... astronomical events that shape humans just as the planets are subject to the stars.
In these years since I first began collecting and seeking out designer toys, I've changed so much it's hard to articulate and feels a bit silly to attempt but alas, words might be my only friend as my eyes are still seeing freeway exit signs and headlights after a long journey home to a small oasis town where it's ok to create despite religious and cultural oppression bordering every property.
Whether Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco or Cleveland, Ohio, the place where you live is defined in the minds of others, whether accurate or not. There are stereotypes and cliches each of us faces, geographically, religiously, environmentally, and living in a place is what opens your eyes to those writings on the wall that speak in whispers. Some places seem to slip between the cracks entirely while others bring tourists and adoring crowds. Whatever the case, we all have our village, the places we love most and the spaces we seek when in need of inspiration.
When you look around your town, city or village, do you see art? Do you see expression, creativity, love and stewardship in the places where people gather to spend time? Do you feel free to enjoy that beauty whether only admiring or participating yourself?
Art. Is. A. Gift. When you are working in a coal mine, when you are sitting in a cubicle, when you are plowing a field, washing dishes or folding laundry- it is an art, yes, but it may not be considered so by anyone but you. Being like water is the way that any act can be zen, sure... but an oil painting, music, or a sculpture is something we all agree is to be admired by the masses when talented hands have known somehow (in ways that the working hands have not time or energy to develop) something that no one else could have imagined or made manifest.
Do you have talented hands or working hands? Do you have both? This life is nothing without music, art, nature, those things we know are beyond grasp in some way but also more tangible than really almost anything else. Relationships, wisdom, beliefs- they ebb and flow, they are cycles, they are not objects to be admired or displayed. But a statue... a throw up piece on a brick wall... an album cover, a political poster, these things... can change the world.
So there are hubs and hidden gems geographically speaking where you can be who you are and are free to explore boundaries, where you feel the spark that brings whatever you create to the tips of your fingers and then gives you the drive to make it real so others can understand you in some way that is or is not profound but that is why art is subjective. And you know that when you go into those states of being where time and space are lost and you're catalyzing something that I will not be silly enough to pretend to claim to know the name of...
This giant culture jammed beer can speaking to destiny is located somewhere in the desert southwest, you know it or you don't. You won't find it or you will- but I came to it serendipitously and it brought tears to my eyes and to that artist that put this up- thank you. You know exactly the way you touched my heart because you JUST KNOW. And that is how we grow and change and become better, we have to be touched and want more... you have to want to grow. Because LIFE IS ART. YOUR LIFE IS ART. More than anything you leave behind. Life is an art form.
SPACECRUISE
ECLIPSE 2017
Be. Here. Now.
We are sun storm chasers.
After following the light for several days I plotted my course and we created our circle, cycles and templates for tomorrow. Intent is everything. Instead of traversing to TOTALITY with the masses, we crept quietly to the edge of a sacred mountain, where we listened to a hawk call out as sun and moon kissed for the first time.
Moving with the clouds we came to rest in an ancient settlement, as full sky and fractional sun brought sacred shadows and an eternal sunset~dawn moved in its own circle around us. We are catalysts, we are the callers, we are day in night and night in day. Juxtapositions by definition, we are in transition.
We Fly...
A blue jay revealed a secret by singing- this hidden swing in the middle of the forest, so hidden we might not have seen- and we stopped everything to play. Hanging in midair like the moon, silence became giggles and blissful laughter, we touched the sky and the earth in one motion, connecting dots and becoming invisible to gravity and time's watchful eye.
We Float...
Stream bed filled with fossils, elk on mountain tops, rainforest slugs and Standing Tall People wrapping roots around forever Stone People. They are all whispering secrets of yesterday and reminding us that life is the blink of an eye. Our laughter will echo forever and never as no one but us has heard... we are one with each other, we are light and shadow, combining hemispheres, we are life and breath and joy and love and eternity, each one of us is our own earth sun and moon in totality.
Roadtrip . Superbloom 2017
Carrizo Plains To Morro Bay...
Tales of James Dean handed out by old timers made the journey feel like a page from another era. Our directions given not by Siri, but by the kind weathered faces of those helping lost souls find their way back home for many chapters.
I felt lost at times on this trip despite moderate preparation and a blissful outlook. Something about the ancient plains caught me off guard and memories flooded all those dry spots that needed watering with tears. Sacred and scorched, with San Andreas screaming- her scars marking the years gone by-- I saw my own scars, the equally unique way in which they've healed, sometimes out of alignment with Mother Earth's movement... and I wept.
Alive in this blossoming foreverness, my children dancing around me in the desert I adore... a place where so much life has been cradled and lost and honored and forgotten. Thank you, I whispered and sang. Thank you, I offered... thank you, I sang.
CLAIM YOUR DESTINY BEER
Utah Desert | The Motherland 2016
To The Moon And Back
Following the footsteps of those gone just before us, we tracked our DNA and traced the trails with light feet, light hearts, light minds ...past desolate Deseret features and distant desert blooms. Sleeping in sunny attic rooms.
Reborn as desert creatures, light seekers, night creepers... we sought the moon- and to never come back.
We ate by firesides with stories of fireflies and we drank in stars like the Milky Way, where mother's milk could never fade except in streets flooded not by rivers, but by the bulbs not of flowers. Those manmade towers... and we floated on flood waters home.
Life Goes In Cycles
It's All Mathematics -author unknown
Circles and cycles repeating like favorite beats bringing me back to these places... topographical grooves, mystical moods, at the edge of the world and no June gloom in sight.
San Luis Obispo and the summer coast were calling after weeks spent behind my keyboard.
The Pacific Coast Highway has stolen me a thousand miles or more at a time, Mexico to Canada and back, but now, Big Sur is cut off from the world, an isolated island where only memories and the thought of flora and fauna free from humanity's touch can soothe the ache I have to make the familiar drive home, yet... again.
I knew it might be the last time- every time. So I soaked it all in like vitamins.
After the superbloom this spring, midsummer in nearby places brought new adventures, from food to friends and from family and fur babies... we lived and loved and laughed and grew closer to nature and one another, just as it should be. After my raw adventure and our perfectly bilssful lunch date at Bliss Cafe SLO, we were off to Morro Bay and Elephant Seal Beach, where we could see the fog coming in from the Pacific. We made Moonstone Beach our landing spot, where I once again found myself retracing my own footsteps, my own paths were crossing connecting me to years ago. Visions of yesterdays and shadows where even further back- my dad once stood- were all swirling with the breeze in my hair, and my future- my dreams-come-true, ran around me in their own tightly woven circles, giggling.
Sun-streaked locks now invisible, the skin is peeling on the tip of my nose, just like when I was five. My children however, remain protected and soothed, kissed by aloe, with new tan lines that will fade and remind them daily as they do, that this was the best summer of their lives. Just like next summer will be. And the next...
I'm really enjoying this wisdom that comes with full circle perspective, this mathematical point where conscience and compassion come together, highlighting a joy that only experience can bring. Today is different than twenty years ago, forty years ago, a hundred years ago, and so very much the same.
CULTURE JAM AND OTHER MADE UP TERMINOLOGY
Artista
Fashionista: fash·ion·is·ta
ˌfaSHəˈnēstə/Submit
nouninformal
1. a designer of haute couture.
2. a devoted follower of fashion.
------
Artista: Kind of a made up word and self given moniker
1. to exclaim my love for all things artistic,
2. to express a sense of desire to someday make art but,
for now that I merely admire the skills and time devoted
by others;
3. learn to curate the works of those I admire most and
want to support in every way possible in hope for a better
world.