Breathing Thru My Eyes

There is a Bit of Me From Then

2009-12-22T09:35:00.000-08:00

Nothing is simple. So many conglomerations of who we are in this life and from lives past. All of the people we have been...loves...pain...joys...appetites...talents are stored inside of us, popping out like a magickal jack in the box when we least expect it.

Nothing is forgotten...nothing is truly lost or destroyed.

Disconcerting as it is a times, traces of me have come through the years. I have recollected being an elderly Jewish man being herded onto a train in Germany during World War II. That was a surprise. I have been a servant, peasant, soldier, Queen (definitely not what it's cracked up to be..lonely), warrior (majorly more interesting than Queen), Nun (that really sucked) and Soiled Dove (couple of times...apparently I enjoyed that one A LOT!). It's been a long litany of positions in lives that were far from glamorous or easy. However, there was great good in each and lessons to be learned in all.

Each life time is a remarkable distillation of all these things. These are what we call "fantasies" in our lives now....what we want to act out for the fun...but is it just fun or is it a longing much deeper than we wish to acknowledge? Allowed to experience the remainders...emotions and desires or revulsions that come out of nowhere...or that sense of knowing where a place is in town without having been there in this lifetime...give us the reassurance of something more profound happening in our life than meets the eye. I have always believed that all the lessons...all of the growth that we must go through in order to grow spiritually cannot possibly be learned in one lifetime. We have to experience the parts we miss...the victim one lifetime...the robber the next....freedom, slavery, poverty and wealth and all the infinite lessons that go with each piece of the puzzle.

For me, I believe this is what Aleistar Crowley meant when he said that "every man is a star." We are multi-facetted and brilliant in our individuality. We become stars or angels or reach valhalla through our travels intot he infinity. Physics has proven that energy can never be destroyed, only changed into a different form of energy. Essentially we are all energy...that awesome and amazing power that is of God. Making man in his own image speaks of that energy within each of us from the Divine. Damnation comes in when we refuse to acknowledge that divine spark within us that encourages us to grow and become a part of the Ultimate. Accepting as a child...yes...Jesus was right...we lose our wonder and get jaded. We have to be curious and open like children.

I have spent the better part of the last 24 years running away and re-inventing myself because I did not like who I was in this lifetime. I didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to see it. I became unbalanced by embracing parts of what I was previously and overbalanced it with what is now. It's time I actually blend it with what I am now... exploring the bits and taking the joys and lessons from each morsel.

I'm not anticipating an ending to this. I don't believe I'll reach Nirvana anytime soon...though one never knows. I learned a long time ago that you just can't question God, it doesn't work. God just is. It's up to us to figure out how to get back home on our own journey. God left us road signs and markers along the way for each individual. I don't think anyone of these markers are the same for any one person.

Enjoy the journey!

Winter Solstice ( For Alice and For Artos)

2009-12-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

And the candles shine
bright halo around the flame
pushing past the darkness
on this the shortest day

Druid whispers
soft moaning sighs
prayers down all the centuries
on this the shortest day

Journeys made in silence
never truly passing alone
Alice is home among the Old Ones
on this the shortest day

To all who remain living
may we remember whence we came
And celebrate the Yule fire light
on this the shortest day

For Terry

2009-12-13T07:25:00.001-08:00

For Terry

I have a gypsy heart...following my passion was a rule
and I broke it
settled down to soon
for all the wrong reasons
tried to convince myself I was over you
never was started
never begun
but I carried you with me
to the West and the setting sun

Measuring time
and riding daydreams
I watched the years pass
Children, house and a husband
and the nameless something
standing so close by
longing through the night time
searchng in the day
believing it was just fantasy
I tried to make it slip away

Nightmares came with devestation
silent grief and oceans tears
I stood alone in the destruction
and waged war with guilt and fears
Came a day I just stopped trying
let the pain take me away
and I wished so hard for dying
but a memory bid me stay

Lost in the distance came a calling
so familiar and so sweet
I looked in your eyes and was falling
from the pain that was complete
and the mirror shattered into pieces
crumbling shards upon the floor
watched in wonder and excitement
to find another world and door

Back to the places I once danced in
free and easy, light and wild
I was loosened of my sorrow
and once again the gypsy child.
So you see you were the miracle
you had always held the key
and you freed me to come home now
to the you and I
and where we
should be

December 13, 2009

Cocoon

2009-11-15T10:09:00.001-08:00

It is so funny how something so small can make you start dancing again...and I danced...sang...took a candlelight bubblebath. I sat and edited some of my poetry, turned the lights down, listened to country music all night....something I hadn't really done since high school. I had cut that part of me of since then. I tried to escape Provo completely, but it's where I spent my teenage years and some of my married ones. My kids were born there. I had traveled from one end to the other and both sides. I finally admitted to myself that I was homesick. It crept up when I went back with my family to my ex-mother-in-laws funeral in 2002. On the drive home, I cried when I hit the Utah county line.

I laughed long and hard at that! I think I laughed a lot more at myself and everything else. It felt good.

The last few months have been the most hellish I have ever had in my life. I seriously thought of suicide a couple of times. I didn't do it, of course or I wouldn't be writing this. I sort of felt like I went sky diving with my eyes closed and they pushed me out of the plane without telling me. The parachute never opened and I hit the dirt....hard. Isn't it great that God doesn't answer al of our prayers?!

I started looking at blue sky the last few weeks. The snow was beautiful. The leaves are gorgeous. I started listening to music, playing with my co-workers and my kids, laughing at jokes.

WOW! I am still alive and feeling things. The cocoon started opening...very, very slowly. Last night, I stepped out and let my wings dry. I started to fly again...no parachute needed, because the wings were attached. Had been attached all along. Amazing how you can lose track of those things when you are in pain. I realise that I have been given a very important gift...a chance to start over again. What a wonderfult thing to be thankful for.

Catching My Breath

2009-11-14T15:41:00.000-08:00

I have become like you

worshipping the closeness of summer's warm dark

Walking through the fields

the night songs lift from unseen birds

breaking the silence under the oaks

I wait for you

catching my breath on first sight

all midnight and moon-brightness

Minds touch

before hands or lips press

Shelter reached

pulling me to you

clutching the ebony

to leave us lovers

hidden from the

harsh realities of daybreak

Weez 1991

The Dance Begins Again

2009-11-14T15:13:00.000-08:00

Take me dancing

trailing skirts in the wind and

whirling

twisting my body back

feet tapping

hair whipping

whispering out against my skin

and the deep blue of the night

my hands stretch out

fingers lightly caressing

a distant

tune

gypsy longing

gliding back laughing

into your arms

Weez

11/14/2009

Black Mirror

2009-11-14T14:47:00.000-08:00

Staring back at the mirror

ready waiting

doing what I do best

It's hard to say

if this is me

or emotions talking

But there are times

I wonder why

(bother)

the wondering makes me restless

makes me crazy

Lace

ribbons

and those eyes looking back

tired of the madness

of playing

the game

That bed is so hard to sleep in

but when sleep comes

oooooooh! How It Claims You

calls you out

running in the streets

flying down the darkness

to that stranger

A sinsiter

shadow

pressing her face to the glass

Sometimes there

is no face at all

or something

looking

back

from the mirror

coming closer

Finding me looking in

and gazing out

from what is real and

no my

fantasy

Weez

1991

Visited

2009-11-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

This time that comes

Something

somewhat haunting

from behind me

long ago

Old familiar patterns

flowing

The soul does not recognize time

It only knows what it is has seen

Weez

1995

Flash Flood

2009-11-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

Color exploded into my eyes

when I closed them

so tight

summoning the courage

to kiss you

I could see the rain

washing color from

paper mache streamers

left over from some dance

of so long ago

bleeding down the whitewash

seeping into the chalk

flashing out a plume

of bright violet

Weez

1987

Aunt Mame, Aunt Gladys and ME

2009-11-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

"...Sister Christian
There's so much in life
Don't you give it up
Before your time is due
It's true
It's true yeah
Motoring

Motoring....."

Night Ranger

I've always liked that song. It was funny that the other day I started hearing it again, a lot, on the radio. It got me to thinking that there was some truth in that. I'm still here...still breathing...still wanting to do so many things that I didn't get a chance to do. But I also realize that Tony hated me being sad or miserable. He sure as hell would be pissed off with me if I were just throwing it all away to lock myself away from the world.

Auntie Mame was a favorite movie of mine. My Aunt Gladys was also an inspiration all my life. She was earthy, smart, beautiful and gutsy. When I got older and after my divorce to Kelly, I swore that I was going to adopt some of her philosophy. Gladys passed away in 2003. She had survived her husband, my Uncle Gus, by some 15+ years. She grieved for him until the day she died, however, she also travelled, danced, dated, lived her life.

I could hear her voice in my head the other day and she was not too happy with me.

"Goddamn it, Sweetie! Your husband would not want you to be miserable for the rest of your life. Look at your Grandmother. Do you want to end up life her or your mother?"

I am not going to wind up alone, bitter and miserable. Yeah, it hurts. It will always hurt. But I am not going to sit here and rot like they did.

I have Chosen to Live!
Ok.....

The Blanket

2009-11-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

Shine brightly

spreading your love in warm rays

A beautiful blanket

to wrap around

those souls too tired

battered and bruised

They have forgotting

what life is about

Take off their rags

and wrap your blanket around them

giving them strength

giving them hope

You can make the difference

making that pattern that they need

giving them the chance to shine

and pass the blanket on.

Weez 6/1989

The Weasel Report

2009-11-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

I apologize to anybody who has already recieved this as an e-mail. This blog was also my mental health update to friends and family.

I am writing stuff again. I got so inspired with some of the books I bought at the used book sale that it made me remember a time when I was so eager to put pen to paper and just write....even if it was absolute crap!

I did buy a book this weekend on writing memoirs (uh oh!) and a writing book by E.M. Forrester (I loved Sean Connery's portrail of him!). So I started re-reading Virginia Woolf's writing book and I've been inspired. Gotta find that inspiration anywhere I can anymore. I stiffled myself for quite a while worrying about what everybody else would think...would they get angry or their feelings hurt. I know. I never used to be that sensitive about my writing. Tony mellowed me out...a lot...according to Jesse, my son! Not a bad thing. Didn't mean it to sound that way. He just balanced me...no small task, that! Jesus, I miss him so much!

I remember when I used to spend hours pouring over the works of Rossetti, Tennyson, Swinburne, Poe and Arnold Matthews while lying on the floor in a sun spot, stretched out like a cat. My favorite book "Later English Poets" has stood forelorn the last 17 years...only being picked up to be moved instead of opened. I used to pick it up or a volume of Herriot's works and pour myself a glass of Ameretto or Harvey's and relax in the evening while my ex-husband, Kelly, was at school.

The last year I was married to Kelly, I used to write poetry on crisp, autumn mornings with a glass of wine or a Irish coffee by the typewriter and just go! I decided after the divorce that turning my life into Dylan Thomas's drunken one wasn't such a hot idea.

I believe I lost my inspiration due to contentment. Now, I have it back through loss. How fucking Odd is THAT! I always did have a problem writing when I was happy. I'm backasswards! I would go weeks between journal entries...even when it was something important. Now sometimes I go only a matter of hours. Odder still, there is a certain amount of contentment where I am now. Re-acquainting myself with myself and figuring out who and what I am and where the hell I am going next with my life.

On Saturday, after the booksale (was there from 9-1 looking over every single thing at least twice!), I stopped by the grocery store. I bought a combination pizza with sausage, a bottle of green olives, salad makings, Marie's blue cheese dressing, bread, Earl Grey Tea, a generous chunk of Brie, a bottle of white wine and a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Creme. My grocery list may not sound like anything fabulous, but it was all foods I love and used to buy every so often or not at all. It was time to spoil myself...if I was going to spoil myself rotten I would have bought a box of See's (I forgot it when I was in Reno...DAMN IT!)! I knitted in front of the t.v. in my sweats and turned the front porch light off when I wanted to shut it down from the little trick or treaters (which weren't many).

Well, enough of boring you to death. Just a word to let you know I am still alive and obnoxious!

2009-11-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Scratchy throat, back and neck ache, and had an odd headache for the past three or four days. I can't afford to be ill, but if I am coming down with something I may as well get it over with while I still have time off I can take. Have been drinking gallons of tea and taking Echinachia and Golden Seal religiously. Of course, I have been stressed to the breaking point the last few months, so illness wouldn't be a surprise. I keep thinking I can smell chlorine bleach strongly in the frontroom and can't for the life of me figure out where it is coming from. It seems to be eminanting from the corner by the fireplace, but I don't use anything like that in the frontroom....ever. Weird.

All Hallow's was a double treat. Early in the morning before the next door neighbor boys were up with their bb guns, I snuck away for a few hours to the book sale. What a nice time I had searching through all the old and new books. There were a couple of really old volumes I purchased...Elias by Charles Lamb and a biography of P.B. Shelley. I bought a copy of "The Captive" by Proust, a 20 volume complete set of the writings Algernon Charles Swinburne (YES!), a book on wirint by Forrester, another on writing memoirs, a crockery cookbook that I had and Bones the dog ate years ago, a book of ghost stories and some paranormal romances (housewife smut) and romance stories (not Harlequin drivel...think Chocolat or Under the Tuscan Sun). I also bought numerous Yule presents which won't be discussed here.

Four people left to buy for for Yule...Jon, Laura and the Grandkids. I think I've done well. I am still debating as to whether I will put up the tree. Honestly, I just want to wake up the day after New Years and be done with it. Although I am planning on a turkey, cranberries, a pumplin pie, and wild rice for Thanksgiving this year.

All Hallow's was quiet, thankfully! The next door kids came around early and I warned them to behave as the entire neighborhood has been watching them and won't put up with any crap. They seemed to have heeded it. One of them actually wished me a Happy New Year, though I couldn't tell if he actually realised that for me it was...Pagan wise...or was being a smart ass. A little before 8 o'clock and it was all over. I went through 2 and a 1/4 bags of candy. The kids are getting fewer and fewer...although I saw fliers for parties up all over the place, being on a Saturday night. It would have been nice to have met up with the kids in Tahoe, but I really had to keep an eye on things here.

I watched four of my favorite BBC shows and called it a night after writing Tony his nightly letter.

Yesterday was unspectacular. I didn't feel well and curled up most of the day with knitting and watched a very interesting program on Death Masks. They were doing beeswax reproductions of the faces from the life and death masks of historical and famous people. They would then digitally enhancing the faces so that they had their eyes open, blinked, and smiled. Lincoln and Washington's faces were very interesting. Not what I would have expected or what we have seen in photos or paintings. Even the president's then had to have their publicity shots!

I kept track of the football scores and made a list of who I will draft in tonight's draft.

Other than that, it was a peaceful weekend.

2009-10-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

The tears start, seemingly out of nowhere...for no real reason. I find them streaming down my face unexpectedly...sometimes without warning. I have even caught myself crying when I didn't realize I was. I'm not used to this.

I have put up Halloween decorations..albeit more modestly than ususal. The candy is waiting in the cupboard. The red lightbulb has been screwed in at the front porch lamp. The only thing missing is dressing up to scare the kids. I won't do that this year. Every year, Tony and I would figure out what he was going to do for Halloween. Wearing masks was one of his favorite things.

He got such a kick out of the tiny trick or treaters. He really had a soft spot for the little ones, although he would deny it. Snot goblins, rug rats, breeder monkies....that's the usual title for somebody else's kid(s) in the grocery store or elsewhere. Occasionally he would point out a truly cute kid and usually get them into trouble by getting them to copy his silly faces while we were waiting in line.

It's been hard gearing up for this. I spent this last weekend alone and didn't do any artwork, which I had longed all week to do as a release. I purged and organized. I folded some of Tony's clothes and tucked them neatly away in the armoire.

It will be a different experience this year. Hopefully next year will be easier.

Digging Out

2009-10-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Working through this...literally. In the last 48 hours, I have worked myself through the master bath, laundry room and our bedroom. I have dusted, oiled furtniture, straightened, thrift boxed and thrown out. The office is daunting. I have worked from the closet, organizing boxes of old photos so I gcan get to them easier. Next was the rocks that I was polishing...polisher and all parts, including the rocks, have been banned to the garage. Again dusting, sorting thourgh papers, the desk, finding scraps of paper with Tony's handwriting and tearing up. Oiled furniture, and now the bead shelf to dust off. Then vacuum and the next room...the dining room...maybe the kitchen.

I have sworn, cursed, laughed, cried, and curled up on the sofa for awhile during this whole thing wondering when I'll pull out of this a little more....the voice...so soft told me I already was, even if I didn't realize it. A little stunned, I realized, yeah, maybe I was because it was feeling better this afternoon than it had yesterday or this morning. I'm voraciously hungry and I may treat myself to a little something this afternoon before I get to nuts over the rest of the house.

I'm no longer on a time limit to get things done. The only person looking at it now is me. I can tear this stuff up and take my ime with it...well sort of, I'm still a neat freak. I can't believe how much dust accumulated in the office since July. Wow! Tells me what I haven't been taking care of . Well, ok, taking care of me..most important right now.

So, I'm getting closer to wanting to talk to people this weekend. I haven't decided if I quite want to yet or not. Just gathering strength right now. I need this.

The Abyss

2009-10-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

and I am not sure

where I stand

arms stretched out at my sides

staring straight

across the chasm before me

do I fly

do I free fall

do I fall back upon the "safe" ground

that is no longer so

clawing my way back

to a time that doesn't exist

a comfort that was

merely illusion

once again standing

at the well before my feet

no magician this time

to pull me back from

falling into the abyss

Solitary Rose

2009-10-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

Nothing

2009-10-21T13:50:00.001-07:00

I am a ghost
dancing in shadows
a passing breeze
shifting the leaves
to a rustling waltz
sigh of the wind only
the drops of rain
are tears of sorrow
out of my control
the storm passes
only to begin again

Effete

2009-10-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

My life is wrapped

bundled in

yellowing newspaper

obituaries neatly

tied in black ribbons

She leans

mummified

in the corner

behind the bedroom door

Where once she moaned

fingers clawing the bedsheets

as he had kissed her neck

their fingers brushing skin

catching fire

Sprinkled with dust and tears

memories

like blowing sand

scour her soul

raw

pumping pain

that won't stop bleeding

from the wound where her heart had been

Art Has Always Saved Me

2009-10-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

I bought new watercolour brushes for the first time since I was in Windsor, England in 1987. I didn't look at the price tag and shocked myself when the 5 brushes I bought came to $29.95. Nothing really cost-wise, had they been red sables, which I have always preferred, they would have easily cost $60.00 to $70.00 dollars. The last brushes I bought had been at Boots on the High Street, along with some really neat watercolour pens and pots of paints. The day after I bought them, I rose early and walked to a bench lining the Long Walk and proceeded to paint a picture of another park bench close by.

Watercolours have been a staple art supply in my house since early childhood. My father was the real driving force in my learning to draw and paint. Dad would pack me up in the old Chevy Bel Aire and away we would drive to the deYoung Museum or the Palace of Fine Art. I would be enthralled at the fact that anyone could take paints and brushes and create a Renoir or Monet. Sometimes I would ask my Dad to pick me up and hold me so that I could look (but don't touch) closer at a painting. It was so amazing to see the brush strokes, proving to me that, yes, someone actually painted the picture. Up close, you could sometimes see the colours blending...just a minute line a hair's breadth...but enough to capture the eye. I still remember seeing a stroke like that in a Rembrandt painting where the crismon turned to orange...a faint trace of yellow...just a scratch of it peering through. You wouldn't have seen it if you were standing at normal viewing range, but the arms of my father made it possible.

From that time on, I have painted on sidewalks, walls, and rocks. I was disappointed as the pigments faded in the sun and bled off into the gutters in the rain. Later on, in high school, I took watercolours my sophomore year. My grandmother bought me a box of Binney & Smith artist's colours in a white plastic case. I remember sitting in the freezing classroom, listening to the instructor whose name I can't remember, droning on about how you have to see with your own eyes...not what people expect you to see. It was a passion...something to be felt...like when Renee Farnsworth had a leaf bug land on her shoulder in the middle of an outdoor painting class. I was absolutely fascinated at the green wings it had...so much like a leaf and the tiny beady blue eyes peering up helplessly as I grabbed it before she, still screaming, squashed it. I had to paint it. The painting never was displayed it school...and has long since disappeared in the many moves I've made throughout the years.

After my graduation from high school, I again found myself in art classes at the local technical college. Photographic developers, inks, printing inks, and the pungent scent of solvents came whaffing through the lower bowels of the college, blending with the smell of coffee, cinnamon buns and bacon from the cafeteria next door. I fell in love there...or lust...I'm not completely sure which... with a fellow student...all unreciprocated unfortunately...over coffee and discussions of art history, Gutenburg and who had the best prices in town for art supplies. I was in heaven in those classes until I had to take the rest of my core classes to graduate. Art was everything...health, P.E. and algebra seemed dull and hardly worth the effort.

On the walks home, I began to see angles, shapes, shades and nuances in the world around me. Provo in those days had huge horse chestnut and maple trees in front of the spooky, old BYU Academy building. The textures of the rain-soaked, ancient grey sidewalks, littered with wet autumn leaves in every conceivable shade of orange, red, brown and yellows plastered to it was gorgeous. I wondered how anyone could miss this...didn't they see when they walked down the street? Rich brown horse chestnuts rained from the denuded branches, occasionally hitting you in the head as the crows sat and laughed.

Old farm houses and fields took on a whole new meaning. Art became a secret language, one that my father had successfully transmitted to me as a child. It was my own world. The old train tracks up Provo Canyon could become beautful, spooky and sensuous all depending on the light during different seasons and time of day.

When I divorced my first husband in 1987 and went back to England, it was like coming home in many different respects. I had began to recapture myself with watercolours, pens and pencils. Poetry began to mingle more steadly with the art work...like a filling in a pie or pastry. I couldn't live without the colours or words painting something I had seen and had to share or capture in my mind.

Enter Jan McIntyre when I returned to the states. A sculptor, painter, and artist extraordinare, we were distant cousins who became close friends instantly one evening in a bar gathering of musicians. That group was something I will always treasure, even though we have gone our separate ways and Janny has long since passed. The art carried me through the victory of my first gallery showing of watercolors and wood burned items. It carried me past the pain of a failed marriage and into a new life. It held me together through a doomed relationship with a musician that was cursed from the start. Love or lust (definitely both! Oh, yes.), I am not quite sure. Love and lust for the creative life was a definite addiction...and like all junkies, I had to have more.

And then I met Tony in 1992. Tony was earthy, intelligent, well-read, foul mouthed, and the most beautiful man I had ever met...and he wanted me. He was the high school girl's dream. We became lovers within a month and never left each other's side for more than a couple days at a time. He encouraged me to paint, draw, and bought me a 35mm camera outfit. We explored eras; he was in love with the geometrics of art deco and I with the flowing sensuality of art nouveau.

Through the years I lived in arts and crafts stores; always on the search for some technique book, ink, medium or glue. He would stand there sometimes at the end of an aisle, hands on hips, head tilted, "Are you ready yet?" His patience was more immeasurable than he would ever let on or perhaps, realize. He was my muse and pushed me forward to experiment with using different mediums.

I began taking photo copies and painting them, using them in collages and putting them into journals. Beads and glass, their fine pure colours, intrigued me. Seed beads became another way of expressing myself through jewelry and then peyote stitch. Spirit bottles and loomed murals began to fill the walls. I bought beads and hoarded them, amassing some several hundred pounds, up until this summer when everything came to a horrible, sudden stop. Tony died on a beautiful, cloudless Sunday afternoon.

The last few months have been rain soaked. I have viewed the world through eyes every bit as unclear as rain washing down glass. Isolation and intolerable grief, along with with an incredibly acute loneliness has shut me off from the world and myself. I began searching through closets in my mind, frantically throwing open doors in dark hallways trying to find a reason for this or some momentary peace. My pens dried up with the heat and disuse and my beading loom covered itself in a fine veil of dust. The vintage mahogany dining room table I had claimed as my art center lay silent and cluttered with ideas and projects now completely gone by the wayside...until last Sunday.

Curiosity got the better of me. I found a small piece of watercolour canvas I had preped with Gesso last spring. It was gritty and I liked the way it felt under my fingers. In the buffet behind the table are my paints, pastels, and other implements. I pulled out a pallette, the old Binney & Smith box of colours and a few brushes from the cat jar. Armed with a glass of water and a rag, I began to paint for the first time in months. I had too much water on the canvas, and the human heart that I had painted began to bleed down the canvas in a happy accident, pooling at the bottom. I bled off the excess water and decided that it was perfect the way it was. Let it dry and rework it in a couple of days to get down the details.

Slowly, I am breaking free of the sorrow. Slowly, once again reaching for who I was and now am through watercolours and brush strokes.

In A Cage Of One's Own Making

2009-10-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

Visitor - Necromancy

2009-09-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

Wrap around me

like silk

passing lightly

sliding soft

over my skin

gone in death

these months

you still distract me

shivers

seeking refuge

in the darkness

where only you were allowed

to wander

slamming me to the wall

pinning me

against the bed

in August heat

sweat rolling down

the curve of my back

to the rumpled sheets below

where I lay with you

unseen

to all but the gifted

(or cursed)

riding this pain

straddling the pleasure

of certain knowledge

that death

is not the end

Karl Marx Got It Wrong...the Opium is TV and Radio!

2009-09-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

Karl Marx was wrong....religion is not the opium of the people...it's television and radio...get back to the truth of the stories, words and the truth of the music!

Stop thinking in the can...that's that the government wants...it's easier to control us that way.

Jim Morrison was right...."break on through to the other side."

You can think universally, but for Christ sake...do it on your own terms and no one else's! Question...please question...you can;t learn unless you do and stop relying on someone else to make up your mind for you...take care of you...you have to take care of you....you with whatever God(s) you beleve in. Let nothing or no one come between you and that higher power...that is the truth. Find it!

Still Life

2009-09-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

July 2009

Your Scent

2009-09-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

You wore the scent of maple leaves crushed under foot in the warm, dusty autumn afternoons. It wasn't a cologne or aftershave, it was your scent...who you were. I smelled it the first time I met you and it clung to me, haunting me as much as your eyes looked into my dreams....told me you were the one. I knew you instinctively through a scent I knew would identify you. I had known it for decades, searched and almost gave up and then suddenly found it in you.

It was the smell of pleasure and something deep, smoldering slowly and spirling up and around me. It calmed me and at the same time made me hunger for that undercurrent that swam below the surface of your voice. I breathed it in as if I were drinking life itself...I could never get enough of you!

Tearing through our closet, I screamed....howled through tears and terror at the scent of you gone. Clothes still hanging, dresser drawer full...I cursed myself for washing the clothes the day before you...oh , OH CHRIST!

My daughter-in-law came in. I whimpered..."I can't smell him!" panic moved on to devastation and I sat down in a messy heap, sobbing hysterically. I found one worn tee shirt, folded it and put it in a zip lock bag to make sure I had the scent somewhere safe for later. Virginia moved me out of the closet and quietly shut the door.

It comes to me at times in odd places...suddenly wafting around me in the open breeze of the rental car last weekend as we crossed the desert going home. No earthly explaination...just suddenly there and gone...caressing me lightly in the afternoon heat. Faint traces at the table last night as you were standing there..unseen...watching me...waiting for an invitation...unnecessary as you unlocked my heart years ago, moved in and never left.

Candles burn for you..lighting your way home and to my heart. I know you are always there by your scent...the scent of maple leaves in autumn...mingled slightly with the smell of a cigerette freshly smoked when no one else is there.

Entering Dreamtime

2009-09-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

To say that I have been a little lazy the last 17 years is to be truthful. You become a bit complacent when you realize that there are two of you to make ends meet instead of just yourself. It had been hard back then before Tony. It will be hard now, although now, unlike then, I do not have a 12 year old to raise. Jon is now 25.

There were important things that I came away with both of the hard times…..when I was younger living vicariously with my grandmother in Daly City, and then again in Fresno after my divorce. I found that I could be both resilient and resourceful. I found that in extreme adversity, I could survive. You get creative living on a shoestring. Extras become special treats instead of everyday commodities. Bisquick, once again, saves the day at suppertime, or lunch or breakfast. The library becomes a free vacation to anywhere in the world whether it is past, present future or fantasy.

There was a simple grace in those days. You relied on what you knew you had. You would use it more judiciously. What you didn’t have, you didn’t want…period. When you could afford it, its appeal had tarnished. You could get other necessities you could really use in the future and put away now. Therefore, you didn’t really want or need it in the first place.

There were mistakes made; many foolish ones. Those same mistakes will not be duplicated due to the lessons learned the first time through. There were certain things I just couldn’t have known as a kid. I had to learn adult mistakes by myself.

Making enough to pay the bills, put food on the table and clothes on are back is more than enough at this point. Some might say it is merely being able to get by. No, it’s more than that. It’s the comfort in knowing that everything else is just icing and glitter. Simple living has so much more substance to it. Amazing how much we, as a society, have forgotten that!

Knowing now that I will not be going to the parties, or dancing, or looking for Mr. Right (due to having found him, married him, and now am his widow) takes the emphasis off what had been supposedly important the first and second times. The fancy clothes, make-up, hair and shoes have been replaced by sensible, necessary and wrinkles. There is a comfort in not being in the “meat market” frenzy. I hadn’t enjoyed it the first time.

The big date has taken on another meaning…a final one. I am rather looking forward to that knock on the door by a healthy, boyish-looking husband to come and take me home to his place once again. I know that once I step through that door, I will be transformed not unlike Cinderella and her pumpkin into the girl I once was. (Boy that will be some hot reunion! Yes, I did go there.)

I don’t want to imply that I intend to let myself go. On the contrary, my interests are being focused in different directions. Classic books that have waited to be read for years are calling to me. Teaching myself and relearning skills I had once had or wanted to attain is now mine to achieve, such as writing, painting and drawing. Solitude is not an enemy.

Since I was the kid that didn’t quite fit in, I learned that being alone and my own best friend wasn’t to be feared. Some of my favorite evenings as a teenager were spent sitting and talking with my grandmother in the cottage in Daly City. We would turn off the radio or t.v., not turning on the lights when it began to become twilight. There we would sit with coffee and maybe cookies she had made that day and she would tell me stories about the family. I remember seeing her turn gradually into a silhouette against the curtain backdrop, slowly fading into the evening. Her voice was soothing and soft. Birds would twitter in the background as they settled down for the night. Gradually, even the noise of the traffic moving down the hill and on Juniper Serra would fade ever so slowly until you could almost hear the ocean 4 miles away.

There was a magic to those evenings. I was aware that the magic was still there over the years, waiting for me to recapture it, and I have. The summer evenings are spent sitting outside on a chair or the front bench, perhaps before the open window of our bedroom.

Wrinkles, middle age spread and strands of grey in my hair are no longer dreaded. They are a testament to the fair share of hell that I have raised in my time. I am thankful to have made it this far alive and in one piece. I’m not telling the stories to an attentive audience, but I am writing them down. It’s my turn now to sit in the soft glow of sunset and recall memories or make new ones.

I have entered dreamtime now....passing into the shadows...

Thank You, My Love

2009-08-31T20:47:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken on Friday, August 28, 2009 around 10 p.m. pst, in my father-in-law's backyard in Fresno, CA.. My son, Jon took the photo for no real apparent reason. This is what he captured. It is not touched up.

I had lost a child in 1994, when I was almost 3 months pregnant. I had wanted that baby so badly. My husband didn't want anymore children. When I lost the baby it was a sore spot, as he maintained it was for the best. It hurt, but I forgave him in my heart for his feeling that way, although I never really got over it. It would naw on me a times, secretly driving me to tears. I deliberately made myself not think of it...blocking it out. I had almost forgotten....almost.

My son, Jon, daughter-in-law Virginia, daughter-in-law's mother, and two of his best friends (one of which was our best man) all saw Tony in the photo. Virginia was the one that said, "he looks like he is holding a baby in his arms." I was stunned. No one knew the story until then. I started to cry because I saw what they were looking at and realized he was telling me not to worry or let it hurt anymore...he has the baby and they are ok.

He has our baby.

Thank you Tony, I can never tell you exactly how much that means to me or how it has given me peace. I hope you can feel what is in my heart and mind. I hope you know how very much both of you mean to me and how very, very much I love you. I look forward to seeing both of you someday.

Love,

Grieving

2009-08-31T15:54:00.001-07:00

I am not feeling social...nor charitable...nor tolerant right now. I do not want to answer questions, talk about IT, or go to work. I don't want to sleep all day...although rest is what I am craving....I want to be alone but with someone at the same time who leaves me alone...knowing someone is in the house is enough.

Stretching myself out on the stone floor, I can feel the cool, uneven surface of the worn rock. Hundreds of feet have walked it smooth. I want to just lie here embracing this sanctuary in my mind, loving the solice and peace it offers.

Leave me to my grieving, for you can do nothing for me. No word or deed will stop the pain that tears at me. I pray for release that won't come right now when I want it. It eludes me, dancing around me as a shadow in the darkness...reaching out and drawing back in a ceaselessly taunting game. I live for seconds at a time when the agony subsides for just that brief span and then floods back in waves.

Blood coarses...bleeding out...an act of mercy and finality...virtually painless for you...and I am envious of your new freedom! I long for it like I longed for you in those nights to come to my door...my lover. I long for you again...aching with the knowing you will steal up on me and make me catch my breath...fingers brushing my skin....holding me in your arms...kissing me and claiming me...smiling like the dawn breaking...telling me to come away.

But until then...I wait with the longing...the anticipation for my lover to come in the night.

Letter to A Dead Boss

2009-08-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Karin...

For your information. I never got tired of my husband nor bored with him!

He is gone

and you

have long, since given up the ghost.

...out of the two of you...

...death BECOMES You!

Rot in the hell of your own making!

Your Former Employee

Lady in the Moon

2009-08-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

Created this past April. Seed beads, mirror, ceramic, and focal point beads.

Exiled into Memory

2009-08-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

bones and beads

standing stones

are sentries of the passing

as the sand and rain

wash the slates clean

the river floods

thunder throws me back

to center

deeply

driving me down into the cave

that lies within me

where I silently leave offerings

to the Old Ones and Ancestors

and those of future days

drawing memories

on the walls

of my mind

For My Husband On His Death

2009-07-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

and so I
dance alone
again
waltzing to the sound
the faint melody
of your breath
the voice in my head
that says
it's ok darling
but here
in the quiet night
the darkness
no longer
a stranger
I peel off my body
slipping out
circling over
waiting for your soul
spiraling
downward
to hold out
the unseen hand
and bring me home

Out My Back Door

2009-05-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

And so the weekend is coming to a close. I have been busy with my e-store trying to fgure out everything I want to post on it. This afternoon we finally got outside and drove out to the desert to look for Wonderstone. We found quite a nice lot that I can put in the tumbler.

Wonderstone is Rhyolite. I hadn't known a lot about the magickal properties of the stone until I did a little homework and had to laugh a little at myself when I read it. Apparently, Rhyolite is a volcanic stone. It does contain a lot of quartz. The Wonderstone here is banded, and highly valued for it's red, brown, deep blue and green "Bullseye" patterns.

The magickal properties associated with Wonderstone deal with making your goals and dreams in life a reality. It helps one to go through the changes necessary, in a prudent manner, to achieve those goals. It is a meditation stone that helps one to remember why we are here, helps to strengthen the mental facilities, and also helps us to resolve past issues. I read also that it represents change, creativity, variety, progress, insight and self-realization. All things I have going through...and I have about 600 pounds of the stuff in my backyard...near our bedroom window. Hmmmmm....coincidence?! I think not.

Since my last blog, I have been working harder on my bead murals, my creativity is going through the roof, I have been working in the backyard to get it cleared and working on myself. The physical side of me is a whole different subject right now. (To be Continued Later)

I also have been learning to boost my energy using psychic exercises. They are designed to help me "fed" my lack of of energy that I just don't seem to be able to create on my own anymore. It's working and I find that fi I don't do them every couple of weeks or so, I am practically dragging myself around...napping during the day...and generally feeling really crappy. My thanks to Michelle Belanger for herlp in this matter. Bright Blessings to you Sister!

Nothing is handed to you...nothing is free. We have to learn to help ourselves to live the lives we wish for. It isn't granted to us, and we have to work hard for it. Many people are learning the old values now the hard way. Some of us a relearning them. It is definitely a time of radical change and introspection. It will be very interesting to see what we do with this situation. Very ineresting, indeed.

Whoa! That was heavy...must be the Wonderstone. Hey....it works!

Time Passages Present

2009-04-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I ranted on here. The hacker has been caught and life is returning to a dull rumble once again. That is really nice.

I've been looking at connections to things. I've been thinking of how connected I am to the outdoors and how good I feel after a day of digging for rocks or just walking in the desert. It is a resting place for me; a refuge. I can dig for rocks until I am sunburned and not care how much time I'm out there or that the find might be small. It's better than a day at the office and much more fulfilling.

Getting the sand and clay under my nails and smearing it accidentally across my face, I realize how close I am to the sand and the stone and rocks. I sometimes lay down on the ground I've been mining and feel the cool moisture seep up into my jeans. Looking this close, I see things I would miss from even a foot or two away. So many patterns and re-creations of just bigger patterns....or is it that they begin small and expand out? Bits of rust and glass from a previous ghost town stare up at me trying to tell me their stories. What happened right here in this spot a hundred years ago? Was there a stable here or a saloon? Maybe it was a brothal and I am lying on my back looking up into the blue skies in a much beter situation that the girl before me.

Nevada is a cruel, harsh place to live. In this economy it is even more difficult than before. It takes a certain type of person to want to live far enough away from everyone else that you'd have to fart through a bull horn to get heard. There is no Macy's near my house. My town has a vet, a grocery store, a 7-11 and, oddly, 2 Chinese restaurants and three Mexican. We recently got a Walmart and a Lowe's...so we're really big time now. It could have stayed even smaller as far as I'm concerned. In a way it has. A lot of the hundreds of new homes that were built here either got damaged in the flood or they have been foreclosed on and left by the owners. Hundreds of empty houses in the once brilliant little new boomtown that started to get pretty snotty and high on it self.

Grandma always said there was always someone better/bigger than yourself. My town is learning to humble the hard way...not necessarily a bad lesson as far as myself and a lot of old times are concerned.

So we drive out to the desert, my husband and I. A few buckets, pick axes and picnic basket is in the car along with the sunscreen and bug repellant. Other than paying for the gas, we amuse ourselves with pieces of rock and the past for the price of investing our time. Dust deveils come to peek in every so often and stir things up, along with the occasional horney toad. Good company as the light begins to grow soft and pinky purple.

Slipping into the Fog - Avalon

2009-01-08T08:27:00.000-08:00

Drifting.

When I am in pain, I do that. Mist and fog are comforting to me. I need...crave...my space and a time and un-structuredness to heal. I need my sisters and the Old Ones.

New pastels and watercolours are coming. New beginnings in a project Arthur and I are going to do. There is so much hope here. My artwork is taking me out and back and into other areas now. So much in my heart that I want to put down on paper with ink and colors. Wrapping the paint and pages around me as a warm, old blanket. But here....here is where I hide...

Moving through the forests and the dry grass...carefully picking out the flat stones on the waters edge....barely discernible through the mist and dark, I have gone this way before...hundreds if not thousands of times. Weaving my song quietly, knowing the spell to unlock the gates when I come to them. The Watchers mark my coming and lift the veil of snow. I am going to the Isle, going where none can follow me unless they know...are one of us...and there are so very few of us left.

Fair Isle

2009-01-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

Standing by the old trees

I see far out into the mist

looking to the West

over the water

Feeling the change

the breezes carrying a hint

of the old voices

fairer

lifting my spirit

lighting my way

ready to step out

on the path

lead me home

It's Time

2009-01-04T09:09:00.001-08:00

In this time

I let the sand

slip

slowly gliding

through my fingers

blowing

the veil catchs

lifting in the sea breeze

floating out

cloud-like

into

the sunset ending

Memories of the Musee

2009-01-04T08:48:00.000-08:00

Framed by the Golden Gate, the Musee is every bit as much a golden treaure as the arches greeting the bay.

Funeral

2008-12-31T10:24:00.000-08:00

Roaring...prowling...clawing at the air...my teeth sink into nothing. Restless and irritated at the buzzing of flies, I snap, glaring and red-eyed. I'm daring a fight that won't come. Ah, Gods!

It is the last day of the year...moments ticking away as any other day, but the last of this precise slice of time. I want it over with, and yet, I cling to it with the other had like a child. Not a bad year...nothing like that. Balancing the scale of judgement, it slips between my fingers, spilling everything. And the blood still pounds relentlessly in my ears as a mad drummer in a padded cell...unheard by anyone.

I torment myself and I do it well. Wishing myself awash in canvas and paint, carving out pieces of recognizable dreams from clay chaos. Instead...

I'm choking on words, banging the letters of a keyboard until my fingers bleed. The atmosphere is cloying like a bowl of long dead flowers floating in skum. Funerary in spirit and attitude, we carve the seconds off the old years carcass, pretending it savory instead of sour.

Mourning jewelry has always becomed me.

Relics

2008-12-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

Evening Sky - Northern Nevada

2008-12-27T13:40:00.000-08:00

Isadora

2008-12-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

Bend back, arm outstretched, gentle gliding step forward....tilting like the moon in crescent. So much that a simple gesture can bestow and portray of life.

My Christmas Miracle - A Lost Best Friend!

2008-12-18T13:53:00.000-08:00

It was colder than hell this morning. The sort of cold that freezes the fog and turns it into tiny little ice crystals. It slicked the highway, turning it into a deadly, black sheet of ice. Glitter frost stuck to the sagebrush and cedars up and down the canyon.

I didn't want to go to work.

Walking into the office this morning, I checked the tape back-up and walked to the breakroom and poured myself a cup of coffee. Sitting down at my desk, I opened my company e-mail and found a cute snowman Christmas wish from one of the gals in Corporate in sunny Southern California.

It was the usual cartoony snowmen, kisses, singing, snow people hugging, having snowball fightes and wishing you good things like phone calls from someone far away. It was nice and cute. I passed it on to a couple other people I know. A couple hours passed.

I decided I had a moment to open my personal e-mail and check it. In my in-box was a name from high school...a long-lost, best girlfriend. Time and stupidity, I let her go...and then always wonder what the hell happened and why.

In my case, it had been stupidity. Petty squabbles and heartbreak made me act like an ass towards someone who had been there through some pretty rough stuff...high school. If you say you didn't get a few scars from it, you're either lying or were too stoned to notice.

She and I had a lot of great times together...water balloons tossed down lover's lane, listening to space music in the middle of the night while camping at Strawberry Reservoir, cow pie tossing, outhouse tipping, fishing, sleep overs, sneaking beers and cigerettes, hanging out around town and walking no particular place. I had wondered about her a lot and the rest of the old gang...Nancy, Joe, Terri and Kerri (the twins), Mary, Tammy, Terry S (god! where was he?!).....what had they done with their lives after high school...were they happy...were they ok?

The stupid ending to our friendship came to my mind often. There were a lot of times I really wanted to tell her that I was sorry for being such a bitch. It haunted me throughout the years, as did the memories of all the good times.

When an e-mail came to my box last summer from Reunion.com., I thought, yeah, right! I entered my info anyway, put in a search and thought...What the heck!

This morning, she answered. She was happy and married and had children. She'd travelled. She had wondered about me, too!

I read her tentative sounding e-mail and immediately answered her back. It was the exhileration and excitement of getting something so special...that present you don't really think you'll get, but you tell Santa anyway and sort of cross your fingers hoping really hard it happens.

I poured myself into an e-mail that, of course, got really long and sent it off. A couple hours later at lunch, there was an answer.

We're both blown away at what a wonderful present we got. In my return reply, memories flowed through my mind...summers, winters, times we'd scared the literal crap out of each other with ghost stories and spooky houses. God! It had been 33 years since we had last talked, had coffee in Sambo's, and laughed. Somehow I was transformed in a moment to a girl of 17, and so was she. It was so marvelous! It is so marvelous!

I don't get mushy, mushy, but I cried. This was like "A Christmas Story" and "Stand By Me" all rolled into one! Even better, I got a chance to say I was sorry and she forgave me and still wants to be friends.

I thought about the year in retrospect...My son remarried this year. I have grandchildren now that my husband and I adore. Another friend, Artos has come back into my life after loosing touch with him for 6 years. I wrote earlier about the changes within myself that I was making...things I was allowing myself to do and feel again...taking chances. I really believe that when you open up, something wonderful happens. In my blog of yesterday, "Sincerly", I spoke of anticipation and the ones I love and miss. I had no idea this was coming. What a wonderful Christmas gift!

Now, once again, I want to say, sincerly, thank you for your present, and your forgiveness, and I love you more than words can say!

The Snow Spell

2008-12-11T10:57:00.000-08:00

The Sierra Nevada's need snow and I have been chanting the snow spell I learned it many years ago. A storm is expected to come in tomorrow afternoon and snow is expected for the next 5 days. Let's hope we get a lot of it and then that it keeps on coming.

Goddess Hecate, hear my plea...
Bring the snow here to me!

I've been reciting it looking at the mountains during my daily walk. Yule is nice with snow, but water during the year is much better.

Inner Peace

2008-12-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

Inner Peace

Worked in chalk last month. This is for my grandmother, Elsa.

The Last Time I Saw Paris...

2008-12-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

"The last time I saw Paris....."

.....was in another lifetime.

In the in the last week or so, Paris has being making itself known.

It has surfaced in the books I've been reading, researching art techniques, and popping up in movies on the television. French jewelry, dancing in Paris, eating at certain cafes, dresses, perfumes, dogs....all Parisian...faint and fleeting colors of chalk washing away in the rain.

Yesterday, I sat in my dining room working in polymer clay. The photos I had chosen as the focal points were mostly small reproductions of Mucha posters or cropped bits from Sargeant paintings. I was turning them into Christmas ornaments for friends.

Gold and copper leaf was worked into the translucent clay, marbling and breaking away in pretty patterns with each turn of the press. Flattening the clay and cutting through it to create the frame work, I cut swirls and worked the clay into Art Nouveau twists and curls. Each frame was different...no two are alike due to the coloring, size, and cut of the piece itself. Baked and cured, I glazed the photos and then added loose pearls and vintage rhinestones from the 20's and 30's. Gold thread was attached to the wire hangers and knotted. Ten ornaments in all.

I should have been satisfied with my work. Instead, I was anxous. I have been for weeks now.

Moving about the house, pacing in lion steps...soft and steady. A hot bath and hot milk with allspice, mace and Irish whiskey did nothing for me. I picked up "Isadora" by Fredricka Blair and was inundated with emotions as she made her trek to Paris and then eventually to Berlin and began her romance with Edward Gordon Craig. Teddy.

Slamming the book shut, I thought "Enough of THIS!" Agitation, restlessness and something unnamed. Crawling under the down covers, I sat in bed and wrote in my journal until I began to fall asleep. My pen strokes began to scribble themselves down the page as sleep set in.

Midnight and I had been dreaming of working on ornaments...there was a stress there within the dream...something was making an otherwise enjoyable time feel pushed, pinched, and miserable. I woke feeling stressed and thirsty. I reached for my journal again and wrote of the bits of dream I remembered.

Fooling around with thoughts on paper...self-analysis and unhappiness with things. I push them away from me because I love them too much and can loose myself in them.

It is as if I am on a sea cliff with oceans of things I love...who I really am...what is important to me, lying below.

It would be so easy to open my arms.
So easy.

Breathing them in, I have embraced this feeling before.

I could open my arms to it...
allowing myself to fall into these things
and back into who I am.

I could...am about to... but am so very afraid that it will change me...

but change me how?

That
I will find out.

Gotta Have 'Em!

2008-11-24T14:36:00.000-08:00

The holidays are coming.

We got up relatively early for a Saturday and left the house, heading to the madness of Christmas shopping. During the year I had picked up a few things here and there. This trip was for our grandchildren. We went to World Market for stocking stuffers. I picked up licorice and black current humbugs, salted black licorice herrings, chocolate santas, jelly belly's and crisp ginger snaps. Toys were found, choices were made. I shopped for the ofice gift and also for my boss's present. We broke for lunch at a favorite Chinese restaurant. The tea was perfect and mellow with just a hint of flowery-ness. I watched the guys eat and sipped tea between General chicken and butter dinner shrimp. The moment felt wonderful. I realized that the three of us had not sat down like this in quite a while.

After lunch, we drove my son to a friends house and the weekend was ours. I began my hunt for art supplies...gum arabic, brushes, clay, embossing powders and two art kits for the grandkids. The last stop was the bookstores. Nothing at Borders...so on to Barnes and Noble. We found the book...a special volume edition, too. Gilt edge and leather bound it was the perfect gift. I looked for art books...I looked for technique books...I looked for a creative blog magazine and they were sold out. I settled for the Vampire Armand by Anne Rice and we bought Frappachinos to end our day.

Walking through the front door we were greeted by 3 of our cats, all seemingly complaining about being left alone during a weekend. The dogs were worse. Upon letting them in, they proceeded to sit in front of us and voice their opinions of the day in the garage. It wasn't pretty. We were being scolded for our thoughtlessness. A chuck of roast turkey and everybody seemed to be in a more forgiving mood.

The wrapping can wait. The goodies were stashed and I have only for my son, my hubby and the dogs to buy for. All three are painless and easy. No malls or crowds..only the season left to bake, wrap, and enjoy. A couple of batches of different cookies and candies to do this year. It isn't the season without the delectible smells of baking bread, gingerbread cookies, cinnamon and nutmeg. I love it when it is like this. Wrapped in an afghan on the sofa, a book, cocoa or a bottle of Newcastle...I drowse listening to the Colts game that my husband is watching. Now that's the way to spend the upcoming holiday evenings!

Sunday was house cleaning, ball games and fixing a few broken Yule ornaments that I didn't get to last year. I had made a couple dozen salt dough stars and have about 15 of them left ready to be gilded and bejeweled. This next weekend we will put up the tree with all the old fashioned toy type ornaments that I have picked up or made over the years...Snoopy and Charlie Brown...the black sheep, snowmen. rocking horses, skiers, and gnomes. Gotta have the gnomes...they drive my daughter crazy...she says they're evil and come alive at night. My daughter is 22. Ok, honey.

Gotta have gnomes!

Art and the Artist

2008-11-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

There is a craft to what I do. I am an Artist.

My grandmother would bundle me up and away we would go downtown to Mission and 5th Street. Disembarking from the No. 14, we wandered west on 5th, past the Old Mint Building and it's cherub fountains, past the bakery crossed 5th at the J.C. Pennies building that stood on the southeast corner of Market. We would wind up at my version of heaven...the Woolworth's that used to be housed on the corner of Market and Powell in the Flood Building.

From the second that you entered you were assailed by the smells of fried chicken, stationary, syrupy coke-a-cola and burgers form the luncheon bars on both sides of the building. There was the huge cosmetics aisles holding everything you could think of at even the most thrifty price range. I remember small, heart- shaped bottles of perfumed with light blue, pointed caps for 50 cents and shrimp pink frosted Cutex nail polish for about the same price. Jewelry was in glass cases or hung from displays. The bargain bins were filled with things you could get for anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar...nice jewelry, too.

The record section was in back of the jewelry/cosmetic area. I would linger there for awhile, hoping that someday I would look as beautiful as Nancy Sinatra, Lulu or Dusty Springfield. I bought Supremes A-Go-Go there back in '68. Next to the record section to the right was the stationary and school supplies. This was my haven. The smells of freshly milled paper, binders, pencils, erasers and paints...oh, yeah. You could buy all sorts of glues, spider shaped pencil sharpeners and office supplies. I still have a box of watercolor pigments in tubes, now dried up, bought during one of our excursions downtown.

Woolworth's was where I fell in love with the basic tools of the artist's trade.

My real love of art came from the many trips my father would take me on to the De Young Museum. That was the second incarnation, not the new building there now. Sometimes we would sit in one room and Dad would have me focus on my favorite piece of art work. I would get as close as I could and look at the way the light would cast shadows on the brush strokes. I noticed how thick or thin the paint was. My Dad had pointed out all these things to me before I could even understand really what he was trying to teach me.

Occasionally, later when we could afford it, my Grandmother and I would ride out to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. We would pack a lunch and spend the day out there, wandering the gallery or looking at the statuary. I was first introduced to Rodin there. The Thinker still sits in his spot in the gallery entry. I always wondered what it was he was brooding over. Why would someone be so serious? He always seemed like he was some terribly, wise person with a vast knowledge of all the secrets of the world. The Thinker impressed me, but not enough to want to be a sculptor.

In school I grabbed art lessons as I could get them. I loved the hour of daily art class and lived for it. In Junior High at West Portal, we began working with different media...plaster, pen and ink, fabric collage, and drawing perspectives. No more crayons and filling in pre-printed pages. It was here that I won a first place ribbon for a pastel chalk drawing of my little half-brother Andrew. The pastels had been bought at, of course, Woolworth's.

High School was my introduction into serious watercolor study with Mr. Larsen. I took jewelry making, sculpture, and tried a different type of art, drama. I began to see how the arts interwove themselves into each other. Music had always been important throughout my life. My father had introduced me to Puccini, Beethoven, Mozart and Bach on 78 records. We would dance around the diningroom, I standing on the tops of his feet. We visited the San Francisco Opera House where I saw Madame Butterfly and The Merry Widow. Music now became incorporated into the times I was writing, drawing or painting.

College was where I really blossumed. I enrolled in Technical College and took Graphic Arts. Here I learned to commercial art and graphic design. Freeform, photography, stripping, paste-up, camera ready art. I loved the smell of developers and acid etch. There was the huge light tables and pots of India Black Ink in the Drafting Room.

I let hormones get in the way, throwing a road block in my path with a baby and a husband. Both required all my time and little for art. Though my desire for art never disappeared. I began drawing and playing with my old fishing tackle box full of tools. I did "Crafty" things. I detested that term and still do. I was an Artist.

After the divorce in 1987, I was more driven and determined than ever to regain my Artist Self. I began venturing out, something my ex-husband had not encouraged. My dress became extravagent and colorful. I wore full, long-flowing dresses and wraps, laces and boots. I wrote short stories and poetry and got published. I went to museums and saw many of the other sculptures and drawings of Rodin, the dreamy paintings of Maxfield Parrish, the posters of Mucha.

My cousin, Jan and I would talk for hours of painting and sculpture. I sat for her. She sculpted me as an angel with Celtic dress and again as the angel with the lion and lamb. We would go out to the clubs and sip wine and dance until dawn with other artists and musicians. We lived, breathed and ate art...there was nothing else.

Pain came in the form of cancer. As in all things, we drown ourselves in the emotions, throwing ourselves into the colors of the most excruciating torments. When I lost my cousin to it, I lost a piece of my soul. I surrendered myself to cocaine and alcohol, depriving myself of food, sleep, and friends. Then my lover left me for another. I was devastated, becoming suicidal. I didn't care. I functioned enough to go to work in the morning, eating nothing until noon...maybe one meal a day. Nothing mattered.

One night I sat out under the stars, beneath the oaks on the huge patio area of our apartment complex. It was a bad neighborhood and you were nuts to be out after dark, alone, unless you were going to your car. It was silent that evening, and the warmth of summer made the oak leaves smell sweet. Small bats were diving through the driveway lights and I felt the eyes of an old friend watching from his window from the apartment above. The evening sky that night was the richest blue, velveteen and impossible in hue. My friend came down and spread out a blanket by the pool. We laid down and watched for ufo's until two.

I was hearing bits of poetry running through my head....blending with the shadows and pinpoints of starlight. Pieces of music floated in an out of memory. The night swallowed me whole. The artist was still there...a silent revelation.

We see things in colors, rich and deep. Emotions bleed out of everything onto everywhere. We play in light and darkness and gray scales in between and never come away prestine and unscathed. The butterfly gently flexes her wings and the storm begins. Life being the ultra dominatrix intermixes pain and pleasure. We would have it no other way.

Playing Ditch at Playland-at-the-Beach

2008-11-13T10:24:00.000-08:00

It's too bright. The sky is lit with bits of frost and brilliant blue. Turning away, my mind goes to street scenes in grayscales, rain and the slick, sleek green and red of traffic lights blazing on water-darkened asphalt. Wet concrete, diesel and coffee blend in an pungent aroma taking me back years...

The beach was closed. It was a weekday and I had transferred onto the No. 18 Sloat, passing my junior high. I rode it out to La Playa and was the only passenger stepping off at the end of the line. The black bus driver stared at the girl in the lilac suede boots and crushed velvet maxi coat stepping off the bus. He had to wonder what I was doing at a closed amusement park, knowing I had ditched school. The driver got off the bus behind me, lit a cigerette and headed across the street to the cafe. I was alone.

Slinging my big purse over my shoulder, I walked toward the Merry-Go-Round. It was shuttered up and quiet. The loud caliopy music and organ tunes, silent. The strings of lights that hung between the Merry-Go-Round building and the funhouse swung forlornly in the clots of fog and wind. In the gathering gloominess, I walked down the alley towards Limbo. Thickening fog made corners soft and shadows deepen. The whole lane ahead of me was blanketed in moving mists and shadows, tricking my eyes into thinking I'd seen someone moving stealthily among the buildings and abandoned rides. White skeletal arms lay crossed under the giant grinning skull of the dark ride, while skeletal angels flew over a dreary picture window landscape behind. Doll heads and fake campy tombstones..."He Stood UP!"... took on an ominous feel. The place was different and I wondered why I was here.

...suede boots darkening on the edges of the soles where the puddles I so carefully avoided were seeping in...seeping in thick and sticky, sliding down into the chinks and crevices inside my mind. It moved so slowly below the icy feeling in my toes that I was unaware of the progress that it was making; shifting and changing me in ways I didn't realize. The salt air mixed with wind and fog and crystalized with tiny grains of sand. It clung to everything it touched...grimming the windows in an almost hopeless coat of grit that would need to be scrapped away before even trying to wash it. My finger traced patterns in it on the funhouse window...mocking Laughing Sal...daring her to make me stop. She just stood there... silent, freckle faced and gap toothed, head cracked at the neck as if she had been mugged. Stood there next to the odd, bug-eyed, beany capped creepy dwarf that was her window companion. The balancing clown around the corner, looked away. The walking charlies, frozen andriveted on their geared windmill posts...moved ever so slightly in the freezing salt winds blowing across the Great Highway.

My finger circled larger, clearing the window of the greasy sand. It was dark behind Sal. Moving up the sloping walkway and under the eaves, I climbed rather clumsily over the turnstile, pressed my hands to the glass on the door and peeked. The door creaked as I leaned on it. Looking down, I found the chains hadn't been secured and I was fighting the urge to transpass and see if I could get inside. Looking behind me toward the bus stop, I saw that the bus and it's driver had gone. No one in any direction.

Like an idiot, I found myself knocking on the glass. No foot falls. No noises from within. The wind was howling and it began to rain. What the hell! I grasped the red painted door and pulled. Slowly it opened. It was heavier than I had imagined it to be. I slipped quietly inside on tiptoe so my heels wouldn't alarm anyone inside to my presence. The wind had shifted, slanting the rain and making it tap on the windows. It poured off the old roof in streams. The sound of wind and rain roared and rushed, sending a shiver racing down my spine that I had never gotten in the place before. Then again, I had never been in there alone and in the dark.

Edging past the entrance to the gingerbread dowling of the mirror maze, I realized I would have to move quickly in case someone spotted me from the outside. Could I remember my way through it in the dark? Everything looked so different. I fought a momentary grip of panic in my stomach. Closing my eyes I felt the rush of exhileration at having the place to myself, to explore as I liked without detection...hopefully. I dashed through, right-left-right-right, and then left. I found myself before the huge rollers. Normally, they were rotating in colorful swirls, polka dots and zig zag's on their over-stuffed bodies. I had to fight my way through them, more difficult now because they weren't moving. Struggling over the last of the three layers of rollers, I finally freed my purse and myself and walked, boot heels clicking, into the darkened main hall. My footsteps echoed on the old wooden floors. Nothing moved. The Funhouse operator's booth was unmanned. No one was here.

I wondered if I shouldn't have barred the front door somehow to make sure I would be safe....but then, if somone had been here...?

Don't think about it. You'll freak out.

The thought of being locked in this of all buildings...with someone else I didn't know... inside...with me...don't think about it.

But...what if I do get locked in?

The stepplechase horses looked sad and forlorn. Looking to my right, I could see the two, tall, skinny, crazy staircases that normally slid either to and fro or side to side. The red one was tilted sideways at an insane angle, disappearing into the darkened gallery above. I didn't like that one even on the days the place was running. I used to have nightmares of falling from it. Best to save the climb for later when I was through exploring down here.

Instead, I walked the wavy boards of the uneven floors, for once not getting hit with the random shots of air coming up through the deliberate holes in the floor. They shifted under my weight crashing and creaking. I stood looking out the window now, behind Sal and saw the the rain was coming down in torrents. Headlights from a couple of passing cars bounced crazily through the old fashioned glass windows...accenting the bubbles and swirls in the glass on the floor in a weird witch's brew. The reflection made Sal look like she was crying, but no tears dripped from her face onto her faded blue coat. I moved away.

Walking over to the operator's booth, I peeked in at all the levers and lights on the control board. The mystery was gone of all the shooting air, noises, bells and whistles was gone. Hmmmph.

I skipped through the barrel, which had always made me sort of sick when I had been in it. The giant spiral-painted inside walls made me think of a huge, striped soda straw lying on it's side. I remember my friend, Tammy standing with her hands plastered against its walls as it turned her upside down in a stationary cartwheel. Across from the barrel was the disc, we had called it the record player. It sat still and empty of riders.

Suddenly, I felt sort of weird...watched. Looking out ahead of me and turning behind me, I saw no one, but the feeling of being watched was still there. Quickly, I dashed to the side of the large wooden slide and pressed myself up against a corner wall, peeking out. Quiet, listen. Nothing out there...no sounds but the wind and creaking of the building. Could someone be in the shadows upstairs? Surely, I would have heard them!

Moving back out from my hidey-hole, I cautiously looked up to the second floor, almost directly above me was one of the huge hanging blocks, part of the funhouse decor. There were three total, suspended by a corner edge of the block from the ceiling. On each side was a clown face. The clown faces were mechanical so they could move their mouths, blink, and roll their eyes. They were creepy when the place was lit up and you were surrounded by people. Now, they were hideous in the gloomy light, the disembodied white face leering down at me in a silent, open mounthed scream. I was both relieved and now frightened. What the hell was I thinking? No one knew where I was. Grandma had surely gotten a phone call by now from Mrs. Smullens in the Principal's office.

Hey, you're here now...look around. You are probably not going to get in anymore trouble than you're already in. I grabbed a potato sack, pulled off my boots and climbed the stairway to the top of the slide. It got darker as I climbed...the top in total darkness. I could here the rain beating on the wall beside me...and something else...a scratching coming from the wall as well. No, in front of me...the top of the stairs. God! Rats! Gotta be a rat, right?! Jesus! A huge, big freakin' rat from the sound of the scratching.

I turned and ran as quickly as I could down the stairway, flinging the potato sack, I grabbed my boots and sat on the bottom step of one of the crazy stairs. One boot clutched by the top in my fist, I could bash whatever it was with my boot and then, hopefully, get the hell out of there. I waited. Nothing. No rat. No boogie man. God, I am feeling so stupid!

Ok, my imagination was getting the best of me. I put my boots back on and decided to climb the staircase up to the gallery. I flung my purse around my neck and with both hands on the railings, I decended. I hated heights and still do. I had to force myself not to panic halfway up and look down. Making it to the top, I stepped over to the long bank of windows. Above the funhouse mirrors and rows of box illusions, were windows. Oddly, the second floor gave the illusion of being darker when you looked up from downstairs. It wasn't. I could see the runnels of window grime mixing with bits of gravel and debris floating with the rain from the roof down to the pavement below. It was after all, November.

Moving to the walking charlie's, past a frozen Maggie, a rolling pin raised in her left hand, ready to strike her smart-assed, macho-mouthed husband, Gigs, in their mechanical display kitchen. I pushed the button and waited for them to move. They didn't. I guess I hadn't really been expecting it.

I stood beind the Walking Charlie's now. I couldn't clearly see the Cliffhouse. Dimly, the outline of Seal Rocks could be made out, shrouded in fog and ocean waves. The waves were really high, crashing against the sea wall, where we had hung in the summer. The foam and spray flew up at least five feet in the air above the wall. I was hypntosed by the weather outside. The rain slanting down against the large blue, yellow, and red stacked-box looking decor of the cafe and penny arcade across the street. I could see the Mad Mine beyond and the weird op-art painted "Tilt" next to it. The dark, diving bell stood on it's perch above its water tank. The only lights I could see were from the street lamps, the cafe where I bought soft-serve cones, and the distant Cliffhouse. Somewhere beyond Lincoln Park, the sound of the fog horns by the Golden Gate Bridge blaired their warning to the ships entering the bay. I couldn't image being out there on a ship in this weather. I remembered suddenly where I was and that I wasn't supposed to be here, either.

I turned and came face to face with a figure, tall and hideously out of proportion. It loomed up, intimately close to me and I shrieked. It was another funhouse mirror...a couple of them, actually. I hadn't remembered them being here in this spot the last time I had come. I guess thay moved them since then. Either way, I had almost peed my pants, I was so scared. My heart was racing and pounding. No, I had to leave. Exploration time was over. I needed to face the music.

I made my way to the front door and noticed the padlock for the chains lying on a ledge next to the exit door. Perhaps the operator had forgotten it there in his haste to get home the night before. I grabbed the open lock and pushed my way through the revolving bars. I was outside and getting completely drenched. Running up the ramp to the front door, I pulled the chain together and clicked the old Master lock shut. No one would be the wiser. Turning around, I ran into a chubby, middle-aged guy wearing a water-darkened, grey raincoat. His cigar was feebly trying to stay lit in all the wind and rain. His pork pie hat was drenched and flopped down, water-logged, on both sides of his balding head. he looked like a reject version of Rocky's brother, paulie.

"Hey kid, what the hell ya doin' up there?"

Smiling to myself. Hey! He hadn't seen me! "Just looking, mister" I said.

"Yeah, well shouldn't you be in school? It's fuckin' rainin! You crazy? Get outta here."

He was fishing in his pocket. I could her keys rattling and jingling.

I ran down the ramp and across the alley to the cafe. Bustling through the door and plopping myself down on the bar stool, I got stared at, wide-eyed, by the waitress with orange lipstick and matching hair. I was the only customer there. The waitress asked if I wanted anything. I said I wanted the fish and chips plate and a coffee.

I hadn't eaten school food in months and saved my money for such excursions... when I could get them. I loved the fish and chips here. I never remembered the name of the place, but it was right next door to the Merry-Go-Round, facing the Great Highway. It had a wonderful dining bar with red, marblized upholstered stools that were bolted down to the floor. A bank of windows lined the west wall so you could watch peple and cars go by. On the outside around the roof line, the cafe was decorated by a facade of little, tiny cottages, each one different from the other.

The wiatress brought my coffee and a small little pot of real cream. Honest! Real, thick sweet cream! I emptied it and dumped two teaspoons of suger in my coffee. The steam felt wonderful in my face as did the heat of the mug on my hands. I love coffee, but days like this made it extra special. I laughed, again attracting another stare from the waitress. She came over, leaned on the counter....

"Ok, what's your story?" she blew a small, cracking bubble from between her orange lips.

I told her I'd skipped school and that I had thought it was really funny to eat my last meal here before going home and getting killed by my grandmother. She grinned and said she's done about the same a few times. I didn't mention my escapade in the funhouse. She turned to the fry cook station behind her and grabbed the plate holding my lunch. I remember the taste of that meal to this day, the odor of the fries and the crispy-light, buttery flavor of the breading on the fish. The tartar sauce was thick with pickles and absolutely perfect. From that time since, I have loved a squeeze of fresh lemon on my fish.

I could go on about the trip home on the No. 18 Sloat bus, transferring to the No. 28 at 19th and Sloat, with the final transfer to the No. 14 at Mission and Geneva to the top of the hill. There isn't really any point, except to say that it was dark and rained the whole way, dulling my former excitement with dread of what I would find awaiting me at home.

When I finally walked down the hill on San Barbara Avenue and up the stairs to our cottage in the back of the Knight's House, I noticed that it was dark inside. Grandma commented that I was home a little late, then said the power had been out all day.

Late?

She said Mrs. Knight had come home from West Portal Lutheran (coincidentally the same school I attended) about 11:30. She had picked up her son, Chris. She had told my Grandma that the power had been out at the school for hours. They finally let the kids out at 11. It was now 1:30 in the afternoon. The bus trip usually took about an hour from school to the top of the hill.

It dawned on me then..... Grandma didn't know. They had never called her for some reason. Back then, a blackout still left you with telephone service. I guess they had their hands full with keeping the kids in line...all Kindergarten through 9th Grades!

That year, 1969, we had watched from our cottage, houses slide down the hills in Broadmore due to the extensive rain. The rain had undermined all sorts of places within and outside of the Bay area. The City was a mess.

It turned out that I had played hookey the first day of series of big Holiday storms we were going to have that year. Cars and buses had gotten stranded. Flooded streets backed up with debris and choked with rainwater. In some spots the sewers had backed up. Parents were warned not to let their little darlings stomp around in their galloshes out in the gutters and puddles. In the worst cases, like Broadmore, people watched their cliffside houses slip into the ocean.

I had been really lucky. I never gotten caught either playing hookey or trespassing that day. I have to admit that I felt bad about trespassing. I didn't vandalize or steal anything, other than some really great memories I took away with me. I had just wanted to look, unmolested at a place that even at that time, I knew was a museum piece...a fading part of Americana.

The old funhouse is gone, torn down with the rest of Playland-at-the-Beach in September of 1972, but I will never forget my couple of hours alone in the funhouse and the ghosts of Walking Charlies and Laughing Sal.

Black and Burgundy and Bleeding

2008-11-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

I have entered the season with black and burgundy hair cascading over my shoulders... Menapause (YES! Finally!), and a sense of quiet self . Quietness has never been a part of me for long periods of time. When I was quiet I was into something or up to something or just something was up. It isn't depression. I've examined myself for that. No. I'm satisfied and happy within myself...my world.

It's the quiet you experience when you're in a cave alone and can hear water dripping ever so slowly...echoing off the walls, bouncing back at you from a thousand different directions. It's noticing every little nook and cranny in that cave, the smell, feel of the rock and grit under your nails and on your hands, straining to see and experience, wondering what is around the next corner or down the cravasse. It's no longer worring if your rope will hold or the batteries of your flashlight are fresh, or even if you will find your way out.

I realised I have embraced my crone. With her I embraced the dark part of myself that is well acquainted with the things that go bump in the night. In the dark, I have stretched out my hands and run my fingers over their craggy faces. Blindly, I read their boney edges and gapping sockets finding them beautiful and exquisite in form.

This afternoon I am drinking Earl Grey tea from a china cup over a black lace tablecloth. It's grey and cloudy outside. I can feel the subtle press of the oncoming storm thrumming on my skin and in my head. It suits the moment and the mood.

Tumbling through the pages of an altered book I've been working on for a few years, I began noticing a pattern to the unplanned art. It is my "Lydia" side...the black and white side I write from, my nom de plume. Photos were pasted, bits of found objects, faux jewels and very red ink scratched against the paper bleeding over and across the pages. My thoughts were as smoke.

There was a soundless, silent grieving that I was engaged in....trapped in the love of tradition and religious ritual of childhood. Confessions and belief... I had left that standing alone, discarded, in the pews and under stained glass. The plaster saints casting down sorrowful disapproving eyes. I laughed and skipped down the aisle, swearing under my breath a vow to never return. And yet, I mourn for things nameless. Things distant and brittle catching words in my throat as a spider's web. What I cannot write, cannot share. So difficult to express.

There is a story here among the scattered pieces.

Leaves

2008-10-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

October has always been my favorite month. Kicking through huge, red and orange maple leaves as I ran around the schoolyard with the other kids in the afternoon, I breathed in that dusty, musky scent. I fell in love with the sound, smell and sight of them from that moment forward.

That same autumn, I took some of the leaves home and sat at the dining room table with old newspapers and a bottle of metallic gold model enamel. Carefully, I would dip my brush in and lay the tip gently on the ribs of it's fragile back. After the ribs were done, I gently traced the outside edges and then left them to dry. My grandmother used them to decorate the house that year.

When we moved to Utah in 1972, I remember the first autumn leaves that I saw come at the mid-point of August. One morning I looked up at Wasatch Mountain from our old house on 5th West in Provo, now long gone. On the top of the mountain was a patch of brilliant, scarlet blazing out as if it had been recently painted there. I asked our neighbor about it. He said it was the scrub oak turning color. Having been a San Francisco kid, I had never experienced the change of seasons, and had never seen the colors that accompanied it. Within two weeks the entire mountain range had turned red as if it were bleeding. Then the aspens joined in, patchworking the range with brilliant hues of orange and yellows mellowing into soft golds and russets.

The accompanying smells of the over ripe unpicked and fallen apples on the ground in the neighbors orchard, blended with the crisping leaves of the cottonwoods and dead tall grass. In the late afternoon heat, the fragrence was hypnotic. The neighbor next door had neglected his apple orchard for quite awhile. The trees got watered, but that was about it. I would slowly walk down the long drive, passing the rose garden and the pumpkins and squash on my way to the old out buildings. There I would cross through the sagging, wooden gate to the irrigation ditch. It was little more than a lazy running creek. I'd hop the ditch and sit under the low hanging, untended apple tree closest to me, finding an apple or two that hadn't gotten wormy and I'd munch. Even warm, they were juicy and sweet. It was cool in this spot due to so much branch overhang. The grass was tall, dusty, yellow and soft. It was easy to bend over and make a comfy hide-y hole to sit and think, read, and write. A couple of times, I dozed off and found myself in the dark, awakened by the chill of the evening coming on. Finding my way home in the dark was a little tricky at that point, but I only got wet a couple of times. After that I learned to take a flashlight with me, just in case.

In college, we were still in Provo, but I was living in a different part of town. Every morning on my way to class, I would pass by the old BYU Academy Building on University Avenue. There the large Horse Chestnuts would be dropping their leaves and fruits. The trees fascinated me as did the spicky husks of the nuts. I would collect pockets of them and put them on the window sill of my room with other little stones and bits of bric-a-brac I had discovered on previous walks. The trees added to the in general spookiness of the old Academy building. It had fallen into a state of disrepair at that time and was no longer being used. I have since learned that the building has been restored, but sadly all of the beautiful horse chestnuts and other trees that had graced it's grounds have been removed. Such a pity.

Whether it is raining and I'm mashing the leaves under my feet on my way to somewhere, or crunching them in heated afternoon of Indian Summer, I still love the autumn leaves.

Chains

2008-09-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

"I can still hear you saying you will never break the chain...." Fleetwood Mac

The clouds move in and the day moves on into the late afternoon. There is little going on at the moment, and I am left to the company of my thoughts. I am traveling in my mind back, as I always do, to the beach. I need to walk the cool sands and feel the wind wash my body of the anxiety and stress of the week. The green grey water is thundering up to the cliffs and the foam washed over the rocks and sand. I sit crosslegged on the cement-pitted platform at the Sutro ruins and pull my sweather-coat tighter around me, head bowed into a big, wooly buddha ball. There are grains of sand blowing past me, tumbling like tiny boulders into the cracks and valleys of the damaged concrete. Rust bleeds out from the the old rebar and bolts that held the girders in place at the old bath house. It runs done the bones of the concrete, spilling out onto the rocks below. The wind is picking up, howling now at the sandstone to the left of me, wearing away the packed sand wall and tiny caves with it's watery breath. The sea spray flies carrying the gulls that are crying out the message of rough water and the arrival of the first storm of autumn. Part of me breaks away and cries with them, keening.

Here is the next task. I am at my desk once more, back from my mental hiatus. The need to go to the place as a child runs to it's mother for safety and comfort. I've done it for decades now...more times than I can possibly count. In this time, I let the sand slip through my fingers in the wind. It's time to say good-bye.

Office Warning!!! Blood Red Nail Polish, Caffiene, Chocolate and Aspirin

2008-09-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

Yep!

Those four things were all I needed today (and yesterday) to get by.

I wore black. It's a daily staple for me. The only fashion addition to my black hair, black jeans and black sweatshirt was blood red, frosted nail polish on my fingernails.

Something has happened to me on some level that has attracted me to the color red. I'm not sure why there has been a sudden change in my liking of the color. I absolutely loathed up until the past year. Red has also been a hellish color on my eyes during migraines....especially red stop lights. The old stoplights, before they changed to led's, were real killers during a migraine. The light would stab through my eyes straight to the brain like a hot poker.

I was 7 years old and having my first migraine while in the back seat of my father's 1957 Chevy Bel Aire. My father, grandmother and I were driving back from San Jose up the El Camino Real to our house in South San Francisco. The intense feeling like my head would explode and my eyeballs fall out on skewers was even more excruciating everytime my father pulled up on a red stoplight. It literally made me nauseous. I've hated the color red ever since.

Rummaging through the bathroom drawers, I found a bottle of OPI Rock-a-pulco Red polish. I decided that I had to paint my toenails....next my fingernails. It was an impulse...boarding on a sudden obsession.

Normally, I dislike red polish a lot. I purchased this bottle for a job a couple years back and for some reason kept it around. I don't wear polish. I am not a fruffy sort of girl, never have been. At 51, I doubt I will be. Staring at the jewel tone bottle, I was almost hypnotized by it. Somehow, there was a certain "just-killed-an-antelope-with-my-bare-hands" appeal to it.

Then an epiphany!

Red...It 's a warning...."Stay away! Brightly colored animals are usually poisionous! She's in "raw meat mode"....LOOK OUT!" I was sending a message. ..Period!

No, Literally...Period! Danger, Will Robinson!

Oh, yeah...I don't need the full moon to go full on howling and get furry.

My husband is well trained. He knows that when I say "raw meat mode," steak miraculously appears from the store. Barbequed, preferably (if that's what you want to call it). Some people have debated that it's even really cooked at all. Ok, I'll be honest. Take the cow, run it past me and I'll carve a hunk out of it as it goes by. I like it seared on both sides just long enough to kill the cooties and that's it. Throw it on the plate bleeding and we'll call it good.

Yesterday afternoon, the migraine tried to emerge. Caffiene...a warm Coke and 2 Excedrin did the job. The migraine abated a little, back to it's little cave. A hot cup of coffee (TRUE Nectar of the gods! despite what the alkies will tell you.) and two sinus tabs kicked it the rest of the way. It's the only way I survive the hormone headaches during the periods my doctor is suprised I'm still having. Believe me, Doc, if it were in my power to shut'er down...don't ya think I would have?! Trust me...this is no joy ride for me or anyone around me during these episodes

Chocolate...even the crappiest type right about now could be the invisability cloke that hides you from the by the big, bad she-wolf. Held out or just thrown on my desk from a distance like a hunk of meat at the zoo, chocolate could be the destraction to momentarily occupy me enough not to completely notice the other crap you could possibly be pulling around my desk that would normally get you killed very quickly.

In this office golf game, you're getting a momentary gimme.

Grab the ball, people, and fucking run!

Harlequin

2008-09-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

Dance the masquerade

Calling,
pulling,
sailing away on your soul
you are
helpless
to pull away

Don the mask
and you are what
you have always longed for
release
comes
in
a
breath

a scream

biting the bottom
of your lip
until
it bleeds
to keep it in

but you can't
are not
allowed
to

lick
of the whip
cracking
the air
cracking
the skin

laughter in
the pain
joyful
in the knowing

it's
all
in
your mind

Exploding Rodent

2008-09-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

My office smelled like skunk on Monday morning. Heavy, thick odor clinging to everything. Ok, polekitty must have been around again this morning. It's getting towards fall and somebody is looking for a nice hybernation spot. That's cool. It happens every year at my office since we have a farm area right across the street and the river bottoms past that.

What was not cool came in the form of a walk through the printroom to get my morning...oh, GAWD!!!! What the hell is that?! Jesus! It smells like rotting mackrel! I mean the funk was overpowering....breathtaking!

Walking further into the foggy ooze, I made my way back to the lab and the breakroom, where Lo! and Behold! Our lab manager is sitting eating egg rolls.

I'm carrying on like a demented woman at the top of my lungs (the considereable sized ones they are) about the stench. I assume it's coming from his breakfast.

The morning goes on....and so does...

The FUNK.

It now has a name and is taking on a life all it's own. It prowls the bowels of the lab and the back offices, weaving itself through the clean air spaces and fumes of berry scented Lysol. It waits for the unsuspecting victim to enter the breakroom.

One of the dirt lab guys wanders in and places his mug in the microwave. He presses the button. It happens. The FUNK has just come back to life and is moving rapidly once again throughout the office, gagging everything in it's path.

We have just discovered the lair of the Funk.

The door opens and with it every dark, grey-green, noxious cartoon cloud you ever saw on Saturday morning. The Ghostbusters Weinie monster has nothing on this. Seriously. It has attitude, strength, and the ability to make even a former forensic photographer puke.

The lab manager wades bravely into the cesspool of decomposing mackrel stench to find...exploded rodent.

Yes, sad as it is to say, some poor little mouse had crawled into the back of the microwave and played "Pop Goes the Weasel."

The microwave, carmelizing mouse and all, now sits forlornly on the floor, unplugged, and away from offended noses and unwitting button pushers. It is being moved to its new home...outside the back lab door to the dumpster...where, hopefully, it will stay until it's burial at the Lockwood Landfill. Taps is gently playing...somewhere in the land of the mouse king.

Wouldn't you just love to be a fly on the wall when the unlucky dumpster diver plugs this bad boy in?!

Open Letter to Vince Young's Mother

2008-09-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Mrs. Young:

I am a mother of two grown sons. When they were children and fell or got made fun of the last thing that I did was coddle them. Sure I would pat them on the back and wipe away tears, but I also turned them around and told them to get up and deal with their situations...whatever they were at that time. I gave them advice. I didn't shield them. I didn't protect them from the blows they were inevitably going to get as kids. I wanted my boys to be able to go out there and tackle anything that would and will come there way as children and now as adults. They've done well.

Mrs. Young, the absolute last thing that your son needs right now is "Momma Coming to the Rescue." Do you have any idea exactly how bad you have made your son look? If he can't handle criticism, you just threw the gates of hell open for him and told the public to eat him alive.

If he has psychological problems he needs to get help....you need to be supportive, BUT from a distance. Let him fight his own battles as a Man. All that a mother or wife does at this point when she speaks to the media is to embarass her son/husband. That could also have gone to Kurt Warner's wife a couple of years ago.

You should also be very thankful that he has Jeff Fisher as his coach and not Bill Parcells. If he pulled any of this with Parcells he may very well never play another down for the team, let alone see the lights of a football field again.

Mother to Mother...Mrs Young you need to SHUT IT!

2008-08-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

It was difficult to collect the thoughts I wanted to write. Difficult because me heart bleeds with it everytime I try. Raw and open and still bleeding....my blood flows into pools painting pictures of things from the past...a magic mirror changing and shifting in the tidal waves.

I think I have found it, again.

The words flowing and pounding against me, out of me, mouth open with the taste of seaweed and salt on my tongue....screaming with the voice of an albatross causht in the wind and suddenly being pulled upwards on the drafts

I am bound to this place as surely as if I were anchored in the rocks...waited down with chains of my own making that slowly turn to rust welding themselves to my bones.

Collecting pieces of the pictures in my head along with sand dollars and pebbles that will go into a jar on my side board in the desert. I long for the sea and the City. Long to see the ghosts shifting through time on the streets before me, before the shops and houses I walked on years before and walk on now.

I cling to the small bits of glass, stone and shells like a rosary to spell over and over...a lifeline to who and what I was and most surprisingly, still am....slowly releasing into what I will become and where we will be again. I am obsessed with it....only admitting it now....as a lover that has run away out of desperation and aching for return. I have run away too many times in my life and now realise I need run no more.

Acceptance is strange and familiar...looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing the child reflected back. My child was curious and bold, unafraid of climbing the dangerous rocks and walking the edge of the Marina walls while my Grandmother screamed out in warning. The sea was always below me and before me....the grand tightrope walk.

I went back to the hotel room that night sick and nerve shattered...wishing silently that I hadn't come this way...it was foolish and silly....throwing up all the years of fear and insecurity....purging my body and soul of the constant running from who and what I have always been....running from my Grandmother's boogie man...the wino in the bushes....running from self-imposed pain and my own reflection. I shed it off me as a skin and looked at it in wonder.

Why?

Habits die hard when you finally cut them down. It writhed and clawed out from within me as my stomach churned and spasmed in pain. A beast within tearing its way out one way or another...everything subsiding once I looked at it and ran my fingers through its fur and called it by my own name. I accepted my beast.

Exausted, but at peace, I fell into sleep next to Tony wrapped in the soft weight of the bedsheets and his scent. I drifted into sleep like a child.

I am going back on my terms....unafraid to climb the stairs and unlock the door of the house on the Marina that has always been mine....but only....only...if I wanted it bad enough.

The child is coming home.

Sutro and the Past

2008-08-17T09:31:00.001-07:00

Walking the Fog

We walked the fog

weaving patterns within

the tall grasses and dill

looking for bits of glass

bits of brick in the rubble

of my father's dream.

We walked

on narrow walls of concrete

rust forming jagged teeth

framed in skeletal jaws

bathe in sea water and silt

Sea birds screamed against the rising tide

raising memories

my father telling me

gulls were the souls of the dead...

Today

I believed it.

We walked the ruins

old Sutro's past glories

whipping up the mists

bathing our faces with that same water

that fed in from the tides

moving

through the tunnels

pulling and pulsing

arteries of the huge pools

pumping millions

of gallons

of sea water

still

filling the tanks

during the day

and then

into the long

chilled

lonely nights.

The ghosts walk

slipping through the green depths

gliding past the pump house

unseen

holding a brittle hand to your face

catching warm breath

in cold fingers

as you pass by the brick stairs

leading to no where.

We walked

the dark

the mist waiting

lurking

for us

at tunnels end

the booming

of the surf

pounding rock walls

crashing on the staircase

washing brick and sand

down cliff faces

pummeling our hearts

with its heart beat.

We walked the fog.....

San Francisco, CA

Monday, Auugust 11, 2008

Walking the Fog

2008-08-17T08:56:00.001-07:00

At first glimpse, the pool seems to be moving, but it isn't. The tide at Sutro was very low...so low you could easily walk out to the rock where a tightrope walker used to walk from Sutro to the rock and back while the waves rolled beneath him.

If you know the history of Sutro, you soon begin to realize that what you are looking at is the five individual swimming pools that were encased within Sutro' glass walls. The water was low enough that you could disinctly make out all of them just below the surface, murky and deep green with algae.

Today you could easily count all five from the warm dining room at Louis' above. We were seated in the coveted corner booth because of it's gorgeous view of the ruins below. There were maybe only three or four people inside, which was mostly staff.

Louis' has been there since before the Baths burned. They experienced the changes of seeing the Baths turn into "the Tropics" with indoor sandy beaches to the ice skating rink in its later years. It has stood in the same place watching the tides, trends in cars and hemlines.

We ate fish and chips and burgers, all the while looking down through the moing mist that was floating in from the ocean, adding an etherial touch to the scene below. People wandered down the paths. Three teenagers roamed over the remains of the grand staircase, occasionally crouching to look at something or staring up at the tall tower of cement.

Going Back to San Francisco

2008-08-08T10:36:00.001-07:00

Monday we will be going back to San Francisco. It has been interesting looking at the different emotions that the visit is bringing about. I bought a new journal just for the trip as I want to write down a lot more of what I am experiencing when I go.

I chose a hotel in my old stomping grounds of South San Francisco. It is close to both my great-grandparents niches at Olivet Cemetery and to my father's burial place in Golden Gate National Cemetery. Going to see my father is always a bittersweet thing for me. I lost him when I was 9. Everytime I go back, I find a part of me...the little girl part of me that I so carefully bury away...coming to the surface and remembering the day we buried him there. 42 years ago and that memory is still so fresh..the sight and smells of fog and rain on wet pavement, and the loud crack of the rifles as they saluted my father. I cried then and I cry now everytime I go. This time I am taking him a cup of hot coffee and a mounds bar (two of his favorite things) as well as the red roses I always take when I go.

Going to see granny is different. There is a sense of unbelievable warmth and love where she is with my great-grandfathers, Jacob and George. It is very light there, as well. I have always loved Olivet's Columbarium. The warm dusty sunlight and smell of flowers lifts my spirits immeasurably. I go to see Granny after I have visited Dad. I always take my camera and take photos of the unusual urns and tombstones that add to the beauty of the Colma Cemeteries. I will go to the now unmarked graves in what the cemetery is now calling Potter's Field. This is where two of my grandmother's still born children were buried in the 30's. There had been small, round, cement markers with numbers on them placed at each gravesite, but they have long since disappeared since the time of my childhood.

I go to the statue of the Drowned Seamen next and place flowers there as well, as many of my ancestors were sailors on both sides of my family. On the way out we stop by the mausoleum of the lady whose ghost I saw when I was 4 or 5. I always hope that Margarite will show herself again back in Potter's Field as she did that foggy, wet morning in the early 1960's. Dark huge Cypress trees that siloutte themselves against the brilliant emerald of the grasses and the white of the headstones. That is how I remember Olivet...like something from an old episode of Dark Shadows. It is very much like that for me and still is. There is a sensing of many things.

That will be our first stop on our trip around "the City." I want the blessings of my ancestors and their guardian influences. San Francisco has become a city of the dead for me in many ways...not just Colma.
There are mysteries there that still linger for me...like my obcession with Sutro Baths and Land's End, Ocean Beach. All are places that I am drawn to in daydreams and memories.

There is anticipation along with the bittersweetness of the visits. Places of my childhood that are still there and relativly unchanged. The wharf is one of those places and the Chopinno at Nick's #5. The smells of crab boiling on the wharf is like perfume to me. Shops selling seashells, postcards and buddhas. We're going to visit the wave organ this time and walk up to Coit Tower, which I haven't done since I was 6. We'll eat lunch (a cheeseburger) at Louis' over by the Sutro Ruins. I want to take a picture of the house Janis Joplin once lived at and my greatgrandmother's house on Geary and 16th.

I guess I want to walk where Granny did. I have photos of her at the Cliffhouse when the Ohioan ran ashore, and when she had walked around Golden Gate Park and Sutro Heights. I want her to guide me around and whisper her secrets in my ear. Yes, she can be my tourguide.

My granny was wild and ahead of her time for coming to San Francisco in 1900. She was her own woman and knew what she wanted and didn't. She could scold you with a mere look. She sailed to Alaska with her second husband, Jacob, who was an Alaska Packer on the Star of Alaska (now the Balclutha). I have a photo of her standing on the beach in Seward, Alaska aiming a Winchester rifle. She was all of 4 feet 11.

Before coming to America, she had an illegitimate child in the old country. My grandmother never knew about her half-sister until she was about 57. When Granny had enough of her first husbands philandering in the Washington State lumber camps, she left him. She opened a boarding house in Crescent City, which was washed away after the tidal waves from the Alaska earthquake in 1964. She met Jacob there and they moved on down to San Francisco where she opened yet another boardinghouse in the Avenues.

I was never really sure if Granny divorced George Orkey. There are no records that I have ever been able to find. But she took the last name of Carlson, Jacob's last name. Granny must have still had a hold on George, though, as he also moved to San Francisco, following her. He stayed in San Francisco where he passed on in 1959. Yep! Granny must have been really something in her day. She did when I was two, but I remember her clearly and the wonderful old boarding house she had. She had boarders living htere until she passed away. She specialized in taking on boarders from other countries that other "respectable" boarding houses would turn away at that time...folks from India, Fiji, and other places.

I want her to take my hand and guide me. She can point at places she knew and loved or where they once were; places that were important to her. Tell me the history I long to know and will never read in a book.

My husband has gotten used to all of this. He realises I think that there are unresolved pieces and bits in my past and te past of my family...I guess as there is in most families. Tony likes hearing the stories and seeing the place through my eyes. I don't know that my children really care about their history. It's ok. I want to try and write down as much as I can so that if they have the chance they can someday perhaps explore it from my descriptions and memories in my journals and photos.

So, for the time being, I am cleaning house and getting ready for the trip on Monday. I want to look up a few places and write down the addresses so I can take photos to add to the history I am trying to write. Yeah. I'm going home.

The WInd and the Rain II

2008-07-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

And with you comes the rain
the winds and
the waters of the sea

Gentle
always gentle in the moment
tea and thunder
lightning
and the rain
with and
without you
and

always

always the scent
of wet pavement in a Windsor summer
decades ago

powerless against the tide of flooding memories
half forgotten bits
of torn photographs
carried on the waves from the sand
drifting

yes

smells of dust and diesel
wisteria and fallen leaves tangle
in the ocean tang

roar and boom
the gulls call
fallen angels against the fading phantoms
of yesterday's amusements
strings of smoke blow
from a lovers cave
hidden in the rocks
rimmed edge of ruins
laid tretcherous on the wind and rising tide
black with the waves and dark grey against
the sky

the fog horns blare

leaving me alone
and restless
hopeful in the wind and the rain
and always the waters
and that you
will come

Do You?

2008-06-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Dark. Muggy and no clouds in sight. Languid, but tranquil in the dusky light as I lay across the sofa.

Thoughts of the wind and the rain and the water. Always the rain and the green grey sky of a September afternoon from years ago. Wind howling and the lightening scattering like cat scratches across the dark and troubled sky. You remember...

remember it like it was yesterday...moments ago and the thoughts pour down just like the rain did that dry day...we hadn't had rain for months and were praying for it....

Ocean waves, the muted green silk frothed with water lace rippling on the rocks at the back of the Sutro cave rippling as my skin in the cold of the fog splintering my nerves on tiny skewers. The shell, pink and white and oh, so fragile, lay in your hand as you thought in the dry, white heat of the desert....you couldn't say a word...not to anyone...but I knew....

knew like the lines that cross my palm or the hunger at the end of the day...hunger coming in waves...the heat of the day rising in mirage from the asphalt...making you think...

wonder.....

why the spirit dances in the dead of night when no one but the stars see...whirling under the branches to the scent of roses and leaves crisping in the summer heat...you are a voyeur, aren't you ...I've said that before , but it's true...like it or not.....yards of cloth sway in breezes and body movements that leave you drunk with desire and longing to touch...you won't...won't allow yourself to do that...and she knows...can feel your breath on her neck down her arms...the breath that is the wind carrying her in the dance...your heartbeat marking the tune as her feet glide and she twirls leaf-like in your heart...is alone and will be so through time...so close you can feel her, smell her scent but never touch her...make her yours...she pulls off the veil to reveal your own face looking back at you and you flinch and then realize she is a mirror and you are the mask...forever hiding from yourself and from her....and you believe in your safety and you believe you are untouched by your desire.....alone in a confessional the little panel slides back to reveal...what?

...staring at the screen only shadows beyond and you still won't reveal it...won't tell you the truth until finally the desperation drives you dizzily down the wire and YOU tell her what you have longed for...what you wish and what you fear...and there is silence greeting you...is she listening...eavesdropping to what is said between the lines...and she softly tells you to light a candle for her soul and say 3 Hail Marys..because surely you are driving her to a hell of your...her own creation clawing at the bedsheets and howling into the dark...unheard

what is this thing that makes you think

you are so civilized?

Saturdays

2008-05-31T08:36:00.000-07:00

Saturdays I revel in the early mornings.....my husband still asleep, the cats and dogs drowsing around my feet. There is a feel to these early mornings that is mine alone. I am almost possessive of these times. I can sit and think....planning the magickal herb garden of my back yard. There are notes to be written, art pieces I wish to make and just quiet moments of contemplation. I study during these times or come up with a new beading project. In Spring and Summer I sit with the window open and let the Virginia Zephyrs breeze through cleansing my home. The early morning light will hit the glass bottles, shimmering through the room and painting the walls in blues, greens and yellows. These are the moments of life that have profound yet unspoken meaning.....something so simple as stained glass in sunlight on an early Saturday morning.

Midnight Rose

2008-05-18T08:24:00.000-07:00

Onyx

against pale skin

she

glows

into the room

gold chain shackled

to ivory ankle

Wrapped in darkness

it is her design

diamonds on black velvet

she

purrs

She

is her own creation

Grab her

you clutch thorns

She

alone

is in control

Slight turn

her head tilts

A whisper...

m e l t i n g

she turns to go

"Midnight..."

Dreaming

2008-05-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

Dreaming

Sandalwood scent

and candle wax

swirls in dream wisps

of warm promise

mysteries

enchantments

from times long past

Savoring sherry

and a good book

with the close intimacy

of the evening

Rustling of robes

on cobblestones

I thought I heard...

drawing drowsily awake

with the sudden rush of Autumn winds

whipping the pages

bourne through time

I fly with the leaves

in the deep night

clinging like Summer incense

on everything I touch

just a

faint

scent

as I raise my head

from the book

where I've been sleeping

2008-05-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

Each grain of sand drops down. I look to the stars and see they are there ...constant...grasses green going golden in the heat of days. Like the grasses I, too, am parched and growing brittle with time.

Breezes turn to blasting winds, pulling up the grains of sand and wearing everything smooth and hazy in my soul. Cycles of wind and rain and brutal sun paint my days in canyon colors. Wearing down the harshness and wild insolance of my youth to a deep, mellow humour.

Something in the dark of the cave beckoned me, and yet I was frightened. I couldn't go yet; couldn't plunge into the cool depths escaping the blazing sun of late spring. Going below ground is a sacred thing for a Druid. You are travelling to the land of the Underworld and all the blessed dead. It is a trip not taken lightly, for if you emerge you are returned to the living world forever changed.

It wasn't what was in the cave that struck me with fear. It was myself and the doubts ... unworthiness. I have learned wisdom and abused power all in the name of love and passions that drove me nearly mad. Power is returning now and I am afraid of not it, but myself. Barren of it by choice for so many years, I come back to the world of true magick and find myself more a novice than the sorceress I was.

Be careful what you wish for...holding crystal to the moon...I realise my time has come. There is no death only cycles moving into the next phases of our eternal lives. Childlike, I will take my offerings and enter the cave.

You Do Not

2008-05-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

You do not know me

You suppose

guess

conjure

judge

and assume

but....

you

do not know

You never asked me

about my

deepest loves

my passions

or the greatest tragedies of my life

You know my face

my laugh

my smile

my scowl and my anger

but

you

do not know

as I am in the moments

such as now

when I muse

silently

quietly pushing aside cobwebs

to peek at memories

of the past

what I have seen

and known

Who I am

I have kept to myself

and share

with the dead

whose tongues

are

silent

(Only a few really know me...the rest see what I want them to see.)

Sea Birds

2008-05-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

Pure essence and emotion

portrayed in dances of the secret heart

and the rolling waves

She flies the music

gently

lifting to soar up

cascading down

outstretched

Pulling away from

the approaching crags

with precision timing

Seabirds dance with the approaching storm

The Rock Photos

2008-05-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

Basalt Bomb approximately 12" in diameter Soda Lakes, Fallon, Nevada - Obvious Volcano Crater
Picture Stone or Wonder Stone
Large Agates

Adventures in the Desert

2008-05-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

After a delightful Friday night of chills, stomach cramps and other nicities, I woke up Saturday morning feeling pretty much back to normal.

Tony and I took the truck out in search of Soda Lakes. They are two small, younger volcanoes that are filled with water (currently...with all our seismic activity...who knows?!) We arrived around 1 and were greeted by a variety of desert flowers, bees and horseflies. The view from the rim is intersting as you can see that you are standing above a caldera. We collected basalt bombs and also found some small chips of agate. Some of the basalt bombs from this area are said to contain olivine and magantite (lodestone). We did find some of the bombs had crystals in the sides. I found a really large bomb about the size of a cantaloupe. It is going in a special spot in the rock garden.

Aferwards, we made out way out past Grimes Point and over to the old, Lake Lahontan dry shores. Out there we found wonderstone and quartz, as well as lava and tufa. We also found a very large patch of agate.

It was fun to watch the fence lizards and horny toads. There were some interesting small birds out there, too. I would have loved to have had a field guide to find out what they were. We stayed out there until 6 and lazily made our way home.

There were a few people staying at the Petrogylphs. We passed by the Hidden Caves, but didn't stop. That will be for another trip. You can see them from the road. The large one has an almost ominous look to it, but that could well be due to the stories of it being haunted. When we do go, I'll make sure I leave some sage and cedar bundles for the Indian spirits, maybe some beads, too.

Today we will unload the rocks from the truck and see what we have. I'll probably sit out with a scrub brush and water and clean off many of them. There is a serenity in rockhounding that I love, even if it is a little insecty sometimes. I am always amazed at the beauty Mother Nature creates...now that's one artistic palette!

Next weekend I am planning on buying a couple of plants to start the garden. A little at a time is how I will build it.

I'll post the photos of the rocks later today.

Doing Better

2008-05-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

Still dancing....I step on my own feet less often now.

Where My Mind Has Been

2008-05-05T19:08:00.000-07:00

Copyright 2008 So, this is the tee shirt design that I created. It's actually my nightshirt. I have been creating again...which is wonderful...however, again the hermitting. I am almost ridiculously jealous of my down-time and privacy. I have forced myself to functions and affairs...pulling away from artwork and garden (still in the works stage). Solitude is something I cannot get enough of. Ahhhh, sacred space. I wrap it around my like a dark shroud within the caves in the desert. I am no longer certain that the emotional scars are hidden. I am no longer sure that I even care.

At 50, I find myself walking in the wind. My hair is uncurled, undone. My face is devoid of make-up, showing the wrinkles and lines of far too much (and also too little). I look at past lives, lovers, and find them angels and demons...but never both. They whisper past me in the wind....tiny wails of the names, places and dates....warm winds in the middle of the night when I walked a garden and tended my roses. They haunt me on these desolate shores, floating and diving about as illusive as incense smoke. No ocean, but a lakeshore...water all the same. Water that calls me back as the mother and lover. I leave them behind me with the sand and the cry of the crow and loons. I can smile at these ghosts. I am comfortable in this body, despite the ravages of age and abuse. It's finally an old friend.

This is not being lonely or sad. This is where I am now....reflecting and gaining warmth in the afternoon sun.

Ah, Dragon, good to see you again. We've always had that knack of coming back from our battles and picking up in the same old way. We've done this for centuries...almost two millenium. I felt you in my head this morning like sunshine on my back after a long winter. It made me glad and wish we were closer...although, I suppose, we never really were apart.

Again, I vow, to write more often. I've no reason not to, I suppose. Notes on tumbleweeds.

The War Within...and Without

2008-02-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

A year since I entered anything. The last time was a blur of fog and misty memories. I am amazed at the details slowly melding into a background of patterns..some things are clear. Other images fade and swirl.

Enigmas.

Fences are put up between the stories, the fantasies and the realities. Time becomes more of an illusion than ever. Lost in a memory or in the writing, I emerge to my "day job" feeling disoriented.

No. I don't have Alzheimer's. I have always been credited with being imaginative. Gram said I was highly imaginative...too much for my own good...that last according to my mother.

Can one really travel back in time? During these moments, I feel that I can...that I have. This life and past lives traveling through all at once...intact but fragmented all at the same time.

Illusion

2007-01-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

Written in pencil

these lines will fall victim to time

and fade

They will be forgotten

as many things

often are

They are not destined

to be famous

read by many

So the little words

connect

into sentence chains

Trying to convey myself

in a language that is

far from perfect

You may spy the novice here...

long robes masking her broken heart

or the curve

of the breast of a lover

Watch keenly

quickly

THERE

sneak up on the naughty school girl

running naked through the

church pews

solely

dare

They are all here within these writings

child lover nun

sorceress warrior queen

and

all

are

Emotional Emetics and Realizing I Don't Know As Much As I Thought

2006-12-23T05:17:00.000-08:00

Snow turns to ice. The clouds of the past few days have traveled east and left the sky a brittle blue filled with floating crystals of glitter. Too bright and too cold, but refreshingly beautiful.

I feel like that has been my life the past year and a half...stuck in the storm and left in the foggy aftermath encased in ice. The depression was numbing; a feeling of being half alive and dream- like. Creating anything artistic was becoming impossible. Writing was a way to regurgitate toxins, but it didn't allow me to move or create. It was a little like being stuck in the maze in the movie remake of 13 Ghosts. There were nightmares being discovered, moving through it and then redicovered and the sheltered from it all to realize I had come to the center of the problem and so what now?

I purged.

I purged my wardrobe, chest of drawers, desks, closets, book shelves and cupboards. The garden was next and then every box in the garage. Things were taken to thrift in truck loads weekly. If I hadn't used it I threw it out or donated it. My vast library of occult books that I had carried with me like icons for decades were destroyed. Some people say that books, being paper do not pick up negative or positive energies, but that isn't true. Everything is influenced in one way or another, because energy keeps everything on the planet together and is a part of every thing. Divorce, bad relationships, worry, anger by the truckload due to family bullshit and backlash, moving, vibes from years in Fresno and desperation to leave the negative vortex had built up into a soup of negativity. The past few years it didn't matter how mundane the topic was, I would start to read a few pages and feel zapped. Dulled.

The whole experience was leaving me emotionally crippled and I finally stopped feeling sorry for myself and decided to walk again.

It's not been easy, but it has been an eye opener.

I went out and listed with an employment agency to go back into the real work force. I landed what I didn't think I wanted, another Engineering firm gig. But this was different. Oddly, the people I have wound up working with are intelligent outside of the engineering realm, happy, joking, eclectic and not cardboard. They think outside of the box and I didn't expect that. I also didn't expect the variety of pagans and eclectically spiritual individuals there. Or maybe, just maybe it was me that had opened. I had found a home.

I began to create...knitting hats, ponchos, scarves. Stitches were changed, patterns altered. Shrines began again and I made one for Marie Laveau to send to my brother in New Orleans. The Yule decorations went up on Thanksgiving weekend and I felt the season creeping in slowly. I was melting.

My life was changing. Gut wrenching at times. The panic attacks had ceased...Thankfully. I turned to my husband again and found it comforting instead of demanding. I'd never shut him off, just wasn't sharing or feeling...like wrapping your arms around yourself in self-protection and hermiting. I needed to insulate. I needed to strip my wiring, but just didn't realize it.

Then there was the fiasco of my father-in-law and the death of his wife. What to do with Dad. Move him up here with us, move into a different place completely that wasn't my choice. Be someone else, be supportive to him and get smacked around emotionally and mentally for it by him. He was short, ignorant and plain rude to me no matter what I did. The idea of living with this man was not appetizing in any way, shape or form. I washed my hands of the entire situation three nights ago when I had found he wants to live in a condo in the downtown area and gamble all of his money away. He, of course, hasn't said he is going to throw it all on the ponies and roulette wheel, but he's made his intentions known by his actions.

On that final letting go, I found not only was I walking, I'd sprouted wings. I awoke at 1 am that night after sleeping 4 hours and thought of ways to make our house more or our own. I was looking at furniture design, sculpturing the walls, mosaics for the bathroom. I was looking a plaster, resins, stone and glass, envisioning an elvish home with a backyard forest retreat in the middle of the desert. Sleep was gone and my mind went childishly berserk.

The baseboards would be changed, stone on the floors throughout the house, stone on the walls inside in stacking fashion up the walls, glass mosaics of all sorts in the baths, carving, painting and woodburning of Celtic, Scandinavian and naturalistic designs on the baseboards, faux ceiling beams, above the arched entryways and on the hearth. I would paint a mural above the fireplace from the Lord of the Rings...or at least inspired by it and the Book of Kells. Latex mold work and wax casts for creating my own space. Finally, I was free to start living in this house...and started the projects by buying two bags of frosted and vitrioled glass pebbles in shades of medium to deep purples to clear. I will buy a bag everytime I go to the store and begin the project in my hall bathroom.

Reading? Yeah, I'm, reading again. Starting with books I have wanted to enjoy for a long time. I jealously guard my reading time. The Silmarillion and the Lost Tales, Vol. 1 are being read simultaneously. (Best way to read the Lost Tales or you will get lost.) Re-examination and baby steps back to faith, and all the things I don't know. Re-reading the details and not glossing over or skimming through anything.

It amazing how much stuff I really don't know.

Wow! I have no clue!

What a great feeling to be curious again about things I was taking for granted or felt stiffled by. I thought... was more than sure that I knew so much...or believed I did. Amazing how we trap ourselves with that. I wasn't even aware I had done it. I didn't know that I was stagnant intellectually or spiritually...well I take that back. Spiritually I was recognizing something for years, but it wasn't clear (nor was I motivated) and there was no idea on where to start to work on it.

So off I go to clean house, plot and, well do who knows what....delicious!

Holy Ghost in My Morning Coffee

2006-11-28T06:33:00.000-08:00

Dove in the morning coffee creamer
...or is it....
(dum dum dum.....)

the Holy Ghost?

Do you think I can get the Roman Catholic Church to sanction this as a vision? You know like the Virgin Mary in the tree trunk or the image of Jesus Christ on the tortilla?

Hmmmmmmmmm!

photo copyright 2006. LAG All Rights Reserved

Stage Door Exit

2006-11-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

Stage Door Exit

When I come back

will you be there to hold me?

Not long,

just a moment to soothe

aching nerves and my tired soul...

Give the loving words

I long to hear

from one

so dear to me now...as always

So far

I have travelled so far

but the reason was not clear

I echoed out the cry

only to hear it

bouncing back lonliness

It was the only answer

Walk the corridors to my rooms

and fall in step...

dark ramblings

with the castles of air

of then and now

Shadows come and go

touching me briefly

passing lightly

Too much (sorrow)

wells up and it

taints my dance

I light a candle for you

burning it bright in the window

light in our storms

light for your way

Pulling back from desperation

I walk the sea foam

gazing into the hems of the oceans' skirt

The decoration and finery of small shells

seaweed embroiders the story of us in her gown

The sea is lifting me

in the shallows

to lay me soft on your shores

silent at your feet

Gather me there, my Love

Away from the lights and stage door exits

lift me away to the fires and warm furs

where I can sleep in peace

perhaps a small time together

without dramas and wars

Claim me as your own and heal this weary soul.

Your Own Version and Mine

2006-11-18T07:55:00.000-08:00

A thorn sticks in my finger and it penetrates right into my brain. There are times when I am afraid of my thoughts...scared of what my mind will conjure up for it's own enjoyment or torture.

I have been writing since 5 this morning. Unable to sleep, the poems, no, the emotions ran over in my mind ceaselessly. If I purgue this, will it leave me alone? How many times do I have to purgue it? It drones on and on as a nun over her rosary.

rerun....

change the channel

twilight zone and they are all the same show.

popcorn for breakfast with oatmeal and a dash of brown sugar with my tea. Okay, let's see where this leads me.

Where it leads you.

There is a dark side to me...glittering, knife-edged and very, very sharp. I am throwing it all up on paper, so to speak...the beautiful, bold, insecure and bizarre.

...the smell of snuffed out candles in the evening air and church confessions banging my head against the dark, on the wood confessional and the words of someone anonymous giving me meaningless absolution for sins I haven't even thought of committing.....wouldn't in a million years.

I count candles and rain drops, and tears that were shed over trivialities and nonesense whose intense meaning in my past look absurd in the now. I keep counting them. Collecting them as scattered beads on the ground, something precious to be put away until I have the patience to re-string them and turn them into something truly beautiful.

The night is young and the spirit is believing in the wax and lighted string and wisps of smoke tangled up in prayers so intimate and unspoken aloud . The silence within me echos up and the choir screams. The spirit boils.

Do you see it? Do you understand ?

So much I pick up and see. So much that goes unnoticed in everyday hurrying to work.

People pass by the building fascade and never stop and REALLY see it. They don't know about the beautiful tiles and the rococo. They don't see the gargoyal sitting placid and ready to spout water during the rainfall. The see the piece of yesterday's newspaper and dog crap by the doric column and have no idea there is a sky above. Eyes to the pavement. Attention to the bits of litter and trash.

I see it, too. I just have the nerve to raise my head. That makes me dangerous. That makes me know too much.

Laying down at Sutro gate is a cement lion. He waits and watches the decades roll by with the fog from the Pacific Ocean. He is covered in sun, covered in dew, cloaked in rain. His roar is frozen. He is wise and aware of everything that has passed before him in the stream of traffic and time that has flowed down the hill over looking the ruins of ghosts and laughter and dancing in the dark to the orchestra after oysters and champagne. Dancing on the floors of a building that you can't see above the ruins and the tunnel and the boom of the waves at high tide when the spirits run with your candle through the darkness and snuff it out on the rocks and water at the end of cave. Dancing with their ghost lights and dreaming of us as a fantasy in their mind.

Madness, you whisper.

Silent. So much is.

Phantom...Do You Know

2006-11-18T07:06:00.000-08:00

Phantom

Do you know the dangers

hanging on draperies of dreams

half-glimpsed

slightly

remembered

but in the waking

crumbling to dust

Even in the light of day

you walk alone here

She is

somewhere

lurking

watching silent

electric

prickling your skin

You turn awaybut can't resist

to search for eyes in the dark

...leopard lights...

soft

running beside you

Something blurry

out of the corner of your eye

She materializes

just that fast

to catch your breath

between her teeth

and drink your passions

as the candles gutter

into smoke wisps in the night.

Relics

2006-11-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

Relics

The stuff of records

realm of the Egyptian Thoth

It is the knowledge

of something missing

thickly veiled

black solitude and shadows

queries...

...a held belief...

photos displayed

in high-gloss fronted cabinets

stare blindly

at their own reflection

tragedies

triumph

love blessed (and forbidden)

The photos stare

and like the sphinx

remain silent.

The Howling

2006-11-18T06:12:00.000-08:00

Passions Swirl

in whipping fabrics

silks blowing in the wind

spinning softly

draping

down

to the Black Rock Desert

The colours dazzle

against the dry, hot sand

tissue waves

rocking me out of my daydreaming

billowing into nights

of loving

and surrender

until the wolf calls

and my throat swells

with the sound of stars

kissing the naked daybreak.

The Tragedy Lingers

2006-11-18T05:14:00.000-08:00

The Tragedy Lingers

Avoidance...

Exiled...

There is nothing to be done

Movement in careful measures

Dancing around the abyss

until my heart is raw

So close to the edge

falling

is no longer a question

Grace has turned to shards of brittle glass

Ancient sorrow

consumes the players

Driving us on

and away

from the truth

that lays

as an ocean between.

I Remember (Just a Little...)

2006-11-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

I Remember (Just a Little)

Come through the rain

mists and memories

Dreams play on in the night

It has been a kiss

an embrace from heaven

Sweet perfume

as if flows by me

through me

Calling

Dreaming out

Drifting and drinking in the darkness

to stop the momentum

and grasp your hand

Fragments

2006-10-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

Yet the washed up treasure chest eludes me. I don’t even have a clue as to what would be inside, but it’s that nagging thing, like the need to write that keeps me pursuing. Pursuit, but of what or who? Myself?

There is an endless task…. I have a very good habit of dodging myself…looking for myself in the strangest places…running as hard as I can to reach me, "she" suddenly veers left or right or speeds up or stops and I pass right through me… pass by me and left with not so much as a shadow to hold...

And she laughs….

Poem - Zephyr

2006-10-06T07:31:00.000-07:00

Zephyr

A firm believer in passion

She stood

trandfixed

by sudden light

from shutters above

piercing the indigo

of the cobbled street below

piercing her heart

with a sudden humor

from a sigh

overheard

overhead

on the evening wind

John Cowper Powys - Moments of Importance

2006-10-04T01:53:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from John Cowper Powys "Autobiography"

"We have to live a long time to know what are the important moments. We think, at the time, they are the days when we change continents, or hemispheres, or nationalities, or religions, or infatuations, but they do not as a rule turn out to be the great lumbering events. They turn out to be some little, tiny, infintesimal sensation...like Proust's "Madeline" dipped in camomile tea...that reveals to us the clue to our life"......."This tattered Euclid revealed to me that it is possible, even when the bulk of your days and the larger number of your hours are full of discomfort, to embrace a thousand essences of life. The limbs of the loveliest of women, the flanks of the nobelest of hills, the mosses upon the most marbly rocks, the clearest waterfalls, the freshest of ploughed-up fields, the blackest of rooks feeding in the furrows, the whitest dust rising up from the most ancient classic roads, the gleam of glittering sea-pebbles, the faint music of the dying away of the burdens of old ballads, the taste of newly baked bread, the feel of the mystery of things as you muse over your tea...to enjoy such presences and such essences of life and to do so in the scope of some negligible fragment of matter, this and nothing less is what I found I could compass under the spell of this little plum-coloured Euclid! Yes, I learnt from this moment in that littered lobby, smelling of acrid leather, sour sweat, and rotten apples, that our deepest pleasure strew behind them...even when at the time they are not consciously enjoyed...leaves of delight become enchanted with the passing of time, like petals gathered in an ancient pot pourri."......"And if they are always there in that storehouse, why cannot they be summoned up at will? And they can! Proust, with his impersonal Eternal Being, stops short at this point, leaving it all to the accidents of our way. But when I think now of that Euclid something comes back! Not in any thrilling rush does it comes. It comes quietly and prepense. But something does actually come from where that book lies in my mind."

Pelican Bones

2006-10-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

Step, step, step…the constant ticking of the clock. I search for an illusive “something.” Swaddled up in my coat and scarf, gloved hands are hidden in my pockets from the cold north wind. I am walking the shoreline looking for bits of driftwood, shells, and interesting flotsam. My search is always the same. Always nameless, as I am never sure what I am after or what I will find.

It is clear and the skies are bright blue. The winter always turns the waters the most intense green-gray-blue. You think of gray as muting, but it isn’t. Not here. It adds a depth to the vibrancy…penetrating and vast. It collides in stark contrast to the tan-white sands and red rock. The outcroppings stick out of the landscape creating a strange alien-like world. Hidey-holes peek out for rats, rabbits, and coyotes from the ancient rock formations. The sage and goatheads grow up and around into brittle boney fingers. The cold air is sweet with the smell of last years brush and grasses.

Coming close to where the water is lapping the beach, I look for the high water mark from the last storm. This is where the debris is left. This is the best place to search for cast up treasures.

A pelican bone lies on the shore. It is half buried in sand and bleached white from last summers heat. The femur is long and smooth with small spikes at the joint. I am always amazed at how light they are. I have several at home on an altar in my workroom where this one is soon to be placed. Some are femurs, others are vertebrae, and pelvis. There are fish bones, small bones of mice and rabbits, and a few deer bones lying among the candles, rocks and beads. Each has found a place of reverence.

Why bones? It seems gruesome to some until I explain that I am awed by structure. We create within our bodies these complex structures. It reminds me of what we are underneath and the grander scheme of things. There is a beauty in bones an intimate puzzle. They are life and a symbol of death. We leave behind this bit of ourselves, although it is not who “we” were. They’ve been described as a structural temple for the spirit…supporting timber and joists…like an old cabin sitting abandoned in the fields.

Bones

The artist Georgia O’Keefe painted a lot of bones…skulls mainly. She found an intricate simplicity to them…a beauty that not many appreciate. Being in the desert, I have found that fascination. It is a sacred tribute of what went before. In different native lore, bones become a spiritual connecting point with a totem or hunted animal…a power source to be drawn upon.

Weaving beads about the top, I will add a pelican feather and place it on my altar as a reminder. Like that bird, my spirit is free and I can fly over the lake and find peace when I’m in need of it. I can dip down into the water and find sustenance in the cool depths and inspiration in the shimmer and dance of the fish. Warming myself on the shores of summer, I feel the wind in my hair as the bird rises up in flight, even though it’s winter. Even though it’s cold.

That is the freedom I find in the bones.

Lost Things on the Highway

2006-10-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

Lost things...lost people...moments and memories. It's strange how sometimes a piece of time that is so important in a special moment gets drowned in your mind and then resurfaces. A trigger point gets touched and suddenly you're transported thirty years back....

into a old brick colored Ford that is driving through a pine and aspen filled canyon in Utah at sunset. The Moody Blues "Knights in White Satin" is playing on the radio. It was the end of autumn. The seats were warm and soft. I was sitting next to this beautiful 18-year-old boy and wishing that this moment could last, though I knew that it wouldn't.

Driving back from California last night at twilight, I was again in a canyon, surrounded by pines and aspen...a passenger counting the white lines. It was raining heavily and the highway was a dark, oily snake in our headlights. My husband and I had stopped in Colfax and bought hot coffee at the Starbucks. The smell of the pines mixed with the coffee and the rain swept air became heavy, crisp, chilly and intoxicating.

For one brief moment the sun shone through the clouds just enough to light the sky to a deep, angry pink. A flash of the something raced in my mind...Terry, a song, and the canyon. So long ago, I thought. In a swallow of coffee, the sky had changed and the colors inside and outside of my head were gone.

The drive to and from California does this to me everytime. Maybe it is the forest or a combination of things, such as the rain or the smell of strong coffee on a cold night. Time passages.

The stretches of forest on Highway 88 (and 49, 120, 50 or 80) are beautiful and yet disturbing. Staring off into the thick woods, I wonder what lurks out there past the low hanging branches and the misty thickets. My mind stirs the witch's brew of images, words, and music, especially when I'm on the road. The whine of the tires on ashalpt, clicking past the fences and telephone poles all creates a music of it's own....he song comes on the radio. I relish the moments of now....."and I love you....yes, I love you...oh, how I love you."