Beautiful Day

A perfectly beautiful day our anniversary has been. Sweetness began it, skies turning from overcast to sunny and clear to stormy and back to partly cloudy for a lovely sunset. Family calling to extend salutations added unexpected warmth to our fires. We are blessed!

Thank you Pam for making the day so completely ours.

Recovery & Reunions

Tonight I keep it simple.

Zucchini appear from every garden: Nature’s abundant harvest appears on every counter... keeps coming: breads, sauté’s, and bakes… plenty more for compresses, salads, facials, and decorative array. Inside the lush plant: a womb-like vortex of still flowering, just forming, fully developed fruit in many stages of various degrees of maturity… much like the inside of the hen we accidentally butchered a few weeks ago. It was miraculous to see the egg-creation biomechanics even as we lamented our mistake: combs do not a rooster make!

I was thunderstruck by the sudden realization that our modern medicine continues to disservice the study of female anatomy. We are different. Beyond compare. Our bodies are sacred places of creation; capable of bringing life forth when conditions are perfect to raise a healthy family on a healthy planet, in a healthy society. But we are constrained in a paradigm where one can bring forth life into a hellish reality simply because the womb does not stop once it starts. Have we forgotten our hearts and souls and minds are the keys by which the Great Spirit & Mother Earth in Divine Understanding have given us ability to bring forth Humanity in Harmony? I think not. But we must struggle to remain the keepers of the Gates of Life. We must remember it is our choice, our life, our children's lives we stand resolute to defend their beginnings.

Our war mongering society, our contentious world, our violent state of current affairs is an abomination to Our Truth: We are meant to Live lives of Joyful Respect, Honorable Discovery, and True Learning in Sharing. We have not even begun to realize our potential growth.

Those who righteously call out for murder, deceit, and destruction will find their actions returned and compounded 100Fold upon themselves and their organizations. It is the Universal Law of Responsibility. You ARE responsible for all your actions. Let them be right and just. Let them honor the diversity that our miraculous planet presents.

Love is the only way. Action that is right minded, just, and compassionate must become our carefully deciphered Path. Let us gather together in reunions of Laughter and Happiness. Let us be willful in action that brings justice into reality.

Magic is alive. GOD Lives! Blessed Be!

Packrats, Routers, & Resistance

Tonight I am home for a few extra hours, a much needed respite in the 12 & 1/2 hour shift schedule which will continue for two more days as I have been called in to cover the next shift due to family illness. I will send my prayers for healing and wellness in my coworker's path.

Tired, but trying to make my upcoming anniversary celebration with Tim exceed expectations, I headed out to the wood shop. Sated with a wonderful dinner of fried catfish, brown rice, fresh garden spinach, and tomato wedges with the spectacular blue cheese dressing prepared by Tim for this welcome dinner together, I set up the router. I had a feeling that something was not quite right... but rather than enlist Tim's advise for this gift for him, and having mastered the use of a router years ago, I continued on, until the routing failed, though the router continued to run... Then the router began to shake violently with more power than I could control and get one hand free to flip the power switch off.... Frightened now, with no emergency off and fighting to keep from routing myself, blue electrical sparks began to arc at the bit! Overwhelmed and in classic flight or fight response I flung the router to the floor, where it crashed, continued to rout the air and yanked the power cord. Adrenaline response. Router bit now too hot to fit in its sleeve and me shaking too much to continue I headed into the house. Tim offered that I was too tired to even have begun working with a power tool and that he was worried as soon as he heard the sound. He was glad I was not hurt and was not expecting an anniversary gift beyond our plan to stay home to cook a gourmet meal together. So, did I rout for nothing? Am I resisting my fatigue? Denying my best health for the making of art?

In deference to my shaking hands and minor shock my project has stalled. I am headed off to bed perchance to dream.... though I have been so deeply tired these last 2 weeks that I do not remember my dreams and my alarms wake me from deepest sleep.

I share with you with images of the little pack rat we chased out of our camp kitchen... and a nest it had created.

What purpose does this nest serve? Art for rodent interiors?

Too beautiful to simply burn, I snapped the shot before we used it for fire tinder in our concerns for the dreaded "Hanta" virus.

Isn't it odd that our culture slowly but surely is being frightened away from all contact with Nature and foreign cultures even as the world goes global and our environment stands perilously close to ruin?

I leave you with two questions:
What is Sacred to you?
What frightens you?

Seasoning, Endings, & New Starts

As I remember recent visits from friends, frantic days finishing off tasks, meals taken in delight, and hard work finished, it occurs to me that summer is indeed ending. Our camp on our land is broken down and the pack rats can return to build their astonishingly lovely nests. The feel in the air of autumn foreshadows the pumpkin spice, nutmeg, hot apple cider broom trips across dramatic harvest moons. Swept skies. (Thank you Tia for that image!)

Tim and I have begun our school routine, I have finally gotten water in the studio and access to the new Sierra Grande Art Gallery. Spent time today with fellow Area Creative Enterprise, LLC member Mike and property owner Sheron cleaning out our second room for meetings and more display space... maybe even a workspace. It is big enough. The two days I spent at the gallery kept my time limited in my studio. The pay off in community building traded for stock building and image making.

I return to work tomorrow and will be on for 5 12 & 1/2 hour days. Will be consumed with getting to work on time and getting enough sleep. Saturday we travel to Trinidad to hear Peter's band Blue Suburban play.

Then, Sunday, Tim and I celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary. Will be making a gourmet meal... and butchering several of our old enough roosters bought in March. Busy! Yes, romantic too! 18 years together and enjoying it more every year.

Summer play ends, autumn work begins. Crickets chirp.

Blessed Be!

Recovering Flow

Wow! What a loaded last 36 hours! Yesterday's alarm was the 911 line ringing... was not called out until crew short driver... on 6 hours of sleep I made the 4 hour trip with a medical pt. Home at noon with no energy left... the day shot, shared with the ghost of a headache. I felt lost.

Today I woke after 11 hours of sleep just before my alarm sounded. Had to work to recover the inspiration I had planned for Tuesday's pre 911 day: am pages brought me back into flow!

Rode my bike through vivid midday blue skies embellished with perfect white billows of cloud. Thinking through my goals for this blog... wanting it to be something more than vanity fare for the ego.

Art! Art is my manna. New studio classroom space is in progress by Louie... my studio now has water, just need to turn input on downstairs after getting the key on Friday.

Wow! My dreaming leads me into reality. Time to make class schedules and menus of services... time to get the business ducks in a row! And, thus the ducky... made collaboratively by two sisters... 6yr old directing 14 yr old in shaping, her vision clear, vivid. The result brilliant yellow above!

Today was perfect with time in the garden and fabulous lasagna dinner by Tim. My flow be strong and clear!

Running Into the Picture

Friends join us for dinner and camaraderie this evening... the house got cleaned and all the stops were pulled out! Fresh Harry & David Royal Riviera pears gifted to us from Linda & her mom, her friend, Cathy added a luxurious touch.

A joy to see the two of them planning tomorrow's drive... like friends, not like parent & child. A discovery to note Linda's mom is a scientist as was her dad. Linda is an engineer... runs in the family!

We enjoyed Tim's expert hand in the kitchen: bison burgers, fresh garden salad with his spectacular blue cheese dressing, and baked french fries. Stuffed, we took a break from eating while I made a desert of crepes with an orange & apricot sauce with a half each of the pears Linda and Cathy brought topped off with a chocolate of choice just in from Mom's mailing to Tim. This we finished off with hot chocolate and mint tea.

We were sated as we set up a photo... timer on Cathy's new digital camera called for ingenuity! I set up an improvised "tripod" to be sure we were all in the photo. Our camera took two also. When those get developed I'll post it... till then, I think fondly on running into the picture back in Chichi when Tim and I were making our farewells to Posada del Arco... Life is Beautiful! It is late... or early, and dreamtime calls:

To bed, perchance to dream. Bon Voyage Linda & Cathy... thanks for the wonderful visit!

Regarding "Bill of NON-Rights" email floating around...

Maybe you've received it already... the email circulating about a new bill of NON-Rights. It's good until you get to the final two articles... sounds like someone of a different mind set tacked them on.... well, I had to rewrite. So: here they are first the article and then my response:

ARTICLE X: This is an English speaking country. We don't care where you are from, English is our language. Learn it or go back to wherever you came from!

MY REWRITE: This country is built on the sweat and dreams of people who have come from all over our Mother Earth. Being big enough in heart and soul we honor and respect the languages of all peoples. We speak English as our unifying language and we delight in learning to communicate Please, Thank you, Happy Birthday, Happy Holiday, and other common culture building phrases in many different languages. We applaud the efforts to save our country's indigenous languages that the Native Americans who have given their lands and ways that we may have ours are currently embarked on.

ARTICLE XI: You do not have the right to change our country's history or heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all -- with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history, and if you are uncomfortable with it, TOUGH!!!!

MY REWRITE: This country was built by people who were displaced from their lands and by others who could not worship in their country as they saw fit. As people who learn from their mistakes, and entrusted with continuing to build a great Nation, we affirm that each and every one of us has the right to our individual spiritual and religious beliefs. Period. The phrase In God we Trust is bigger than you or I can define. As this is true we will remember the wisdom behind separation of church and state and leave religion out of our political devices so that it may express itself without restriction in each individual heart. We grant that most of us are on a Spiritual path and hereby refrain from making judgments based on religious preferences. God understands all languages and all modes of devotion. We will not seek to determine that one way is better than another. We hereby gladly greet each individual as a child worthy of love and respect. God, The Great Spirit, Allah, Krishna, Buddha, The Goddess, Nature, Mother Earth.... knows we must become in our actions what we seek to experience.

Image is of gifts we brought back from our recent trip to Guatemala... a visual reference to the abundant diversity we love about our planet!

Beginnings...

Remembering travel and new neurons forged in discovery... Home after 32nd hour of 44 hour shift... T - 11:40 and counting till I return to my cubicle for final 12.5 hours...

Shower calls, refrigerator working, rain has finally come to these dry lands... My bones call for sleep and this computer screen, while thrilling in comparison to the one I work on, still emits the rays that we do not yet fully understand, still keeps my eyes dry, and causes me to question its magnetic pull on my creative force.