Living Inside Poetry Thanks to Hermes

 Moonday. Waning moon.  Rain.  Despite having meetings and things, I'm treating this day as a poem.  Its all poetry from my ink blueberry smoothie to the "garbage truck's baptismal drizzle" on the street outside. (That phrase is by Audre Lorde.)  I have no choice in the matter. 


Prose won't come.

I'm humming inside mystery.

In love with luck-bringing Hermes.

He's taken me through the underworld again. 

He's stolen Apollo's cattle again.

He's raced through my life on his badass sandals, beat the turtle drum, and cozened my tribe throughout the dark night.  Again.

His snakes wrap around the inside of my skin to heal a long pain, the kind you can almost forget until you look in the mirror he made to remind you.  

Oh Hermes, beloved son of the son of Time and the shy goddess Maia, I'm a muse or a fury running behind you.  I'm a child in your cave hiding in sight.   Catch me if you want to tonight.


For this Moonday, tell me something, anything-- in the form of a poem.  It doesn't have to make any sense and might be best if it does not.  If that's daunting, just give me three words that you like because of the way they sound.

Dancing Naked Man Sent (potentially) from God

Almost fall Moonday.

It was a deep summer for me-- deep and low like a cello.  A summer of bass notes and beets-- red ones the color of blood.

I love beets.  I love all heavy, dark, underground things.  But you know, sometimes its a bit much.  The voice-over for the movie trailer of my mind can occasionally sound something like, "Step into Kate's mind if you dare.  Its lugubrious! Its somewhat maudlin!  It prefers multisyllabic words and its syncopated by the gnashing of teeth!"   

I've been trying to lighten up.  And its been hard.  A friend of mine said I should just ask for lightness, just put the call out.  So I did. (You know... to God, or whoever else was listening-- the angel of jokes maybe.)

And somehow I found myself at two burlesque shows this weekend.  Another friend suggested the first one, at Joe's Pub-- Johnny Cash Burlesque.  That seemed absurd.  I like absurd, and so four friends and I went, even though I'm not exactly into burlesque and could write a long boring post about my thoughts on its cultural significance, the pros and cons.  Luckily I won't.

When we got there two cheery hostesses told us that we would be given the best seats in the house-- the round raised mobster's booth in the front.  They seemed delighted to see us.  You've arrived!  The show can begin! That's my version of the proceedings anyway. 

The show was silly, stupid, funny, creepy, forced, hackneyed, spontaneous.  80% of the cast did a "full reveal" at the end while dancing to Folsom Prison Blues, which was worth the price of admission as far as I was concerned. 

Still, I left shrugging.  I didn't feel delighted, or particularly light.  I was proud of myself for ordering a soda water with lime.  I came home and went to bed.

The next day, Sunday, I walked my dogs to Tompkins Square Park humming Cash tunes in the drizzling rain, and smiling as I thought of the boobs and balls flapping to 'I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.'

The HOWL festival was going on in Tompkins all weekend, and there was something happening on the stage.  It turned out to be a burlesque review called Low Life.  Well how do you like that. 

There was a surprisingly large number of people huddled under umbrellas to watch in the rain (numbers that a poetry reading would not have drawn.  Ever.)  The dancing was impressive-- real dancing.   It put the Joe's Pub show to shame.  The theme this year was women in the beat scene, which happens to be a pet subject of mine.. happens to be the subject of my latest play, in fact.  Hm.

The second to last act was by the king of "boylesque", simply named Tigger.*    He started out with a hilarious monologue in the character of a female hipster living in Paris.  And then there was the dance.  Oh the dance.  It had that je ne sais quoi.  It was set to a French song about what Tigger said was her/his one true love, Harley Davidson, (the song originally made famous by Bridget Bardot.) His repeated kick-start leg move flashing red panties under a tight black skirt had me gasping for breath.

By the finale he was completely nude!  Performing jumping leg splits!  In the middle of the day in Tompkins Square!  It was truly a love song to the East Village, and warmed the cockles of my heart.  That doesn't sound quite right somehow.... 

The moral (if I may use that word) of the story as I see it, is... I sought lightness, asked for lightness, and then had lightness thrust-- near me.  I am changed.

Tigger

For this Moonday, my questions are--  is inappropriateness a requisite for humor?  What's one thing that someone might consider 'wrong' that's made you laugh? Or tell me as story of lightness being thrust upon you.   Or as always, leave a poem, piece of writing, link to music, etc. that inspires you in any way at all.

*As it turns out, I'm not the only person who thinks Tigger is brilliant-- he's worked with Margaret Cho, Penny Arcade, and Karen Finley to name a few. 

Cake or Death?

 Image from Cake Wreaks.

Hot sultry Moonday.  Tropics in Manhattan.

I had it from good authority this morning that I need to lighten up.  As the song says, 'Its only life after all.'  We may as well laugh.  The problem is that I'm a gallows humor person.  The stuff I find funny isn't so light and fluffy.  No angelfood for me.  I prefer fruitcake that could double as a weapon.

Later today I was on Avenue A walking the dogs, looking for little clues to inspire my writing when a pigeon was hit by a passing car.  THUD.  I stopped in my tracks and covered my hand with my mouth in horror.  The pigeon wasn't dead.  It was intact.  Head on and everything.  Blinking.  Another car was coming and the pigeon wasn't moving.

A bearded man in dirty brown pants and a grime gray wife beater ran flailing at the pigeon.   It flapped its wings a bit and flew off the street into a plate glass shop window near my head.   THUNK.

 I stood motionless watching.   The pigeon peered back at me with something I took to be suspicion, and flew off again to muscle in on a finch who was pecking at a piece of bread in the road.  The bearded man grimaced and leaned against a building.

If I were writing the scene in a short film what would happen next is that the horrified, idiotically gaping passer-by (me) would be killed by a falling toilet bowl accidentally pushed off a windowsill by a crazy old lady who was using it as a bird bath for the pigeons.

Please don't be concerned gentle reader.  I'm leaving the city for a few days at the end of the week for some much needed time in the woods where my real-life crazy neighbor who has been trying to get me to bury her dead cat in the garden for two years can't find me.

For this Moonday, tell me what/who makes you laugh?  I'm craving laughter.  I'll take it from anywhere.  Even wholesome sources.

Here's a link to Eddie Izzard's 'cake or death' for those of you in my camp.

I can't go on. I must go on. I go on. Dealing with Defeatism.

Moonday.  New Moon.  A good time to go inward and listen to what our deepest, wisest selves have to say.

As for me, I have no business posting today.  

I'm overheated and surrounded by waste.  I pick up garbage along the community garden fence as often as I can.  Other neighbors do it too.  More garbage blows by with every gust of wind.

When I throw away trash I feel it in my body.  The landfill is part of me.  This is true.  Its part of all of us.  We all have accumulated waste in our bodies that we can't metabolize, but that's another story.

I have chosen this.  Chosen to love and defend this little corner of earth.    I'm sure the garden is necessary for my survival too.

Tomorrow morning at 11 AM there will be a public hearing to help determine the fate of community gardens in the city, which are imperiled yet again.

Why are community gardens imperiled?  Why must people fight to save them?

I don't want to go to the hearing tomorrow.  I would like to spend the time working on my business, or plotting an escape to the ocean for a bit of sanity and perspective.  But I'm going to the hearing.  Dammit.   Be the change etc. etc. 

I'm reminding myself how grateful I am to all of the amazing people and organizations who work so hard for the earth, and therefore for us, the creatures who live here.  All I have to do is show up tomorrow.  How easy is that?  Fairly easy.

Don't know if this rant is of any use to anyone else, but I feel better.  So for this moonday.... RANT!  Or better yet, dream.  What is one collective change you would love to see in the world?  What small (or big) thing do you do to make it happen?

For those of you in NYC, info about the hearing and pep rally starting at 9 may be found on the New York City Community Garden Coalition's website.

life is a dream

Happy Moonday!  It’s the third quarter moon tonight, equal parts light and dark.   The weather is finally cooling down here in NYC, and the last few nights have been good for dreaming.  

Treat dreams a little bit more like waking life, and waking life a little bit more like a dream.  That’s some of the best advice I’ve ever received—maybe in general, but certainly in trying to recall my dreams more frequently.

Treating waking life like dreaming-- that is, looking for signs, symbols, layers of meaning in things-- also stimulates my writing.  And its easy to do in the carnival of New York City.

I love picking up random pieces of paper I find on the street and imagining that someone wants me to read them like clues.  Sometimes I find grocery lists, an occasional overwrought love-note, or most magically a single yellowed page from an old book sitting on the middle of an empty sidewalk.

This latest falls into the last category, a lone page from The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader.  This is in part what it says:

“Meditation is a never-ending movement.  You can never say that you are meditating or set aside a period for meditation.  It isn’t at your command.  Its benediction doesn’t come to you because you lead a systemized life or follow a particular routine or morality.  It comes only when your heart is really open.  Not opened by the key of thought, not made safe by the intellect, but when it is as open as the skies without a cloud; then it comes without your knowing, without your invitation."

What a gorgeous little reminder for me to open my heart on a cloudless summer night.  Thanks Krishnamurti!

What treasures have you found in the street or in the woods/desert/jungle?  Stories, wisdom, inspiration?

I screama you screama we all screama for ice creama

Happy pretty-much-full Moonday.  The moon is in Aquarius, a fixed air sign.  Its time to make dreams real and to be filled with inspiration and new ideas.  Hurray.

As I’m typing this I keep glancing down at my left wrist that is encircled with a glossy yellow ribbon with sky blue lettering that reads, ‘I wish to find pleasure in things as much as I used to as a child.’

That sentence makes me think of the Fourth of July circa 1980 and ‘I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream’.  I remember a hot sticky South Florida twilight carpeted by scratchy crab grass and graced by fireflies.  I’m sitting at a picnic table next to my best friend holding an as yet unlit sparkler and chanting. Ice cream appears like magic in vats behind us, and a big sign is put up that reads ‘make your own sundaes’.  The ice cream chant gets louder as we are joined by a horde of other kids and laughing, loopy adults. 

I’m also reminded of one of my favorite films, Down By Law by Jim Jarmusch, when Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni are in a prison cell in New Orleans and Roberto Benigni says that he ‘has a scream’ and starts this chant which eventually takes over the entire prison ward.  If any of us ever find ourselves in prison, may we be lucky enough to share a cell with Roberto Benigni, at least in our minds.

The ribbon on my wrist came from an interactive art exhibit now on display at the New Museum on the Bowery in New York City by artist Rivane Neuenschwander.  On three sides of a room are thousands of multicolored ribbons with wishes on them.  You choose a ribbon, take it out of the wall, and leave your own wish in the hole in the wall that the ribbon leaves.  Neuenschwander writes that this is a riff on a Brazillian folk practice. The whole exhibit, entitled ‘A Day Like Any Other’ transforms the mundane—an empty room, a dripping bucket, a chewed plastic swizzle stick— into something with the significance of a dream or a child’s imagination, and turns our wishes into things of beauty in and of themselves.  If you aren’t in NYC, you can still participate in the exhibit and leave a wish online.

 I think the wish on my wrist might just be the secret to happiness.  The other night there was a short summer thunderstorm.  The air has been thick and heavy for weeks without rain so it felt a little bit like Christmas to hear those bellows drowning out the cacophony of the city and the hiss of a hard downpour on hot pavement.

I sat watching the storm from a seat on my windowsill, which is about a foot wide, glancing down at my yellow ribbon and remembering how when I was a kid I thought windowsills that you could sit on were about the coolest thing in the world.  In the rare event that I found a windowsill wide enough, I’d hop up and sing ‘The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow’ pretending I was looking out at a grimy New York City street instead of someplace in pristine suburbia.    How wonderful that was.  And suddenly it is wonderful again. 

How about you?  What was a simple pleasure you enjoyed immensely as a child?

P.S. I know I haven’t posted in forever, or even been online at all in a millennium in web terms, but I didn’t want to start out writing about that.  I had some exceedingly pressing business that I’ll probably write about soon.  I’m back now, and have made a commitment to myself (and now to you, kind reader) to post every Moonday, Wednesday and Friday until further notice (certainly for several web millennia.)

Sometimes Kindness Involves Silver Shoes

Dark Moonday.  Waning crescent moon, also known as the balsamic moon, several days before the new moon.     A good time for releasing habits, patterns, and old junk of all kinds.  Pruning.

 

Recently I’ve been having one of those times that makes you think, “Was I actually happy a little while ago, and… did I really have energy to get things done?  Will I ever have energy again?”

I spent last week visiting the critical care unit of a very good hospital five hours away from where I live, sitting vigil with my family around the bed of my aunt who is fighting for her survival. 

I could feel the strands of my life slipping away until there was nothing left but the sterile hospital with pumps of antibacterial lotion at every door like mezuzahs, the efficient, rushing nurses, the buzzing, beeping machines, my aunt’s shallow breath. 

I silently chanted ‘Ya Sha Fi’, a Sufi chant meaning ‘to heal’ or ‘healing’ for hours.  It was peaceful.  My presence seemed helpful, and it felt so good to be helpful.

Coming back has been harder.  My aunt isn’t out of the woods, but her prognosis has improved.  The older generation sent me home.  They told me I'd be needed again soon, and in the meantime I had to take care of my own life.   That’s the tricky part.  Picking up those strands again after casting them aside so suddenly.

We have a very small family, and I adore my aunt.  Part of me wants to stay in bed, pull the covers up over my head, and hibernate for the foreseeable future.

But that's not what I’m doing.  I’m also not forcing myself, kicking and screaming, back to ‘normal’.  I’m being patient with the part of myself that wants to hide under the covers forever more. 

I learned this trick when I was quitting smoking.  If you really want to shift a behavior, you have to be incredibly kind to the part of yourself that is resistant to the change.  

Today I bought a pair of silver shoes I’ve been wanting for about a year.  Just looking at them makes me want to dance, and certainly to get out of bed so I can put them on.  I wore a silk dress because beautiful clothes help me to face the world.  I gave myself small manageable tasks to accomplish with the understanding that I didn't actually have to get everything done.

I held space for how I’m feeling in my meditation practice.  And I did my meditation practice. 

I’m sure that I’ll have days where I fail, days where I stay in bed in ratty sweats reading a novel for hours, getting up only to eat brownies, and I have to be kind to myself on those days too.  Tell myself its o.k.  I’ll just try again tomorrow.

Because life is too precious to be spent beating ourselves up.

For this Moonday, I’d love it as always if you have some art or a poem to share of any kind.  I’d also love to know what cheers you up?  What do you do to encourage yourself when you’re feeling overwhelmed by life?

Learning to Give from the Overflow, not from the Well

There is a wise Sufi saying, 'Give from your overflow, not from your well.'  I interpret this as meaning give from a place of love, joy, and abundance, not suffering and self-deprivation.

Today in New York City its a rainy Moonday, which feels good.  Its like a snow day for gardeners.  I'm taking some time for myself after spending a large portion of the last two weeks working on a massive volunteer project.  I'm the director of a kid's community garden on the Lower East Side called the Children's Magical Garden.**

 Kids love worms. They get super excited whenever they find one.

Kids, teachers from the School for Global Leaders across the street from the garden, parents, other garden members and I have been putting in a rain garden, a small native wetlands that soaks up the water in the garden's lowest point.  When the plants have grown up some, it will not only look like a wild, beautiful place, but will also create habitat for more song birds, humming birds, bees, dragonflies, and butterflies... increasing the wildness in the city by just a little bit, and providing an amazing outdoor classroom for kids and adults alike. 

All of this warms the cockles of my heart and so I haven't minded all the hard work, even though it has involved digging three feet down into ground consisting of broken brick, brick dust, rusted metal and the like.

My hands look, to quote a literary friend, "very Pearl S. Buck" with the ground-in dirt (even after scrubbing) giving them a mottled appearance.  On the upside, I can feel my hands getting stronger and think I would do alright in an arm wrestling contest.

This community garden is one of my greatest spiritual teachers.  Sometimes its lessons have been frikkin hard. 

Its a large unpaid undertaking and has the potential to suck up all available time-- very dangerous for an entrepreneur and writer with a penchant for procrastination.  There have also been so many seemingly hostile elements to overcome such as--

• Toxic soil. (Most NYC soil is poisoned with lead from paint and must be painstakingly amended or replaced with new, healthy compost.) 
• Endless rubble.  (The garden was build on the foundation of a burned down building and has been sinking into that crushed foundation over the years.)
• Ignorance.  (Very few people have any gardening experience, and therefore greatly underestimate the challenges the space provides.  They think it is simply a matter of planting flowers and watching them grow.) 
• Personal conflict/ toxic relationships.  Toxic environments produce toxic relationships.  It has been challenging to say the least to work through personal difficulties with other gardeners.  In the end, however, it has also been deeply rewarding and transformational to all involved.  These transformed relationships have made this next, more productive phase of work/play possible after years of two steps forward, one step back.

What I have strongly come to believe is that service, to be truly effective, must involve the concept of what my Dancemeditation teacher Dunya calls dynamic reciprocity.   This means that the work actually feeds you.  The work leaves you feeling joyful, inspired, re-energized, more creative, more full of juice for your own projects.

Forget selflessness.  For most of us, its a trap.

Dynamic reciprocity goes beyond feeling good because you are "making a difference".  That attitude of self-righteousness has the potential to slide into its own flip-side, an attitude I've felt many a time... martyrdom.  "I'm spending all this time and not getting paid.  My work isn't appreciated, and yet its now somehow just 'expected' of me by the community.  The garden doesn't look beautiful yet and so people don't see all the hard work I've put in..." blah blah blah.

Then there is "Oh my gosh!  Look at me with my big ego wanting credit!  I'm not selfless enough!  This is about the earth, the children..." blah blah blah martyrdom.

I decided that this year I was going to pull self-righeousness and martyrdom out by the roots and compost them.  I've been planting joy and contentment in their place.

I've made it a point to focus on activites I adore such as mentoring a small group of local kids I've known for years who are committed to the garden and to listening/working with the earth.  I'm learning to better delegate the tasks that I dislike, such as contacting the parks department. (I actually much prefer removing rubble by hand than organizing on the phone.)

I have also reminded myself that it is because of this project that I was sponsored by the community to go to school to become a permaculture designer, something that has dramatically increased my happienss.

The past two weeks I haven't had as much time to write, but all of the additional physical activity has magically worked out all kinds of kinks in the third draft of my play and first draft of my novel.  My third eye feels very open, and I feel tremendously grounded and focused in my herbal consultations after working so intensely with the earth.  Dynamic reciprocity is happening, and its truly awesome.

For this Moonday, I would as always love it if you have art/poetry etc. to share in the comments, and am also interested in where you have found dynamic reciprocity or rooted out self-righteousness/martyrdom in your own life...

**Children's Magical Garden website still under construction.  Find lots of pictures of the garden on the facebook group, Children's Magical Garden Community and Supporters

Thanks to friend, fellow Dancemeditator, and novelist Karleen Koen who first introduced me to the phrase 'give from your overflow, not from your well'. I've been pondering it ever since.

Rainbow Jelly in an Underwater Passageway (a five-year-old named this blog post)

Moonday.  Waning crescent.  Dark spring moon just before Wednesday's new moon.   A subtle time.   So many changes on the earth.

Last year in April, National Poetry Month in the US, I took the 30 poems in 30 days challenge.  I posted them on facebook-- which felt both bold and terrifying, but I knew that if I didn't post them I wouldn't write them.  Some days the poems stuck in my throat and twisted out of me, and other days they flowed.

After it was over I felt restored.  I hadn't written poetry regularly in over ten years.  I'd gotten my poetry mojo back. 

But after the month of forced poetry I disappointed myself.  I didn't keep it up the way I'd wanted to.  I punished myself for needing that outside influence, the uncritical cheering voices of friends.  Real writers don't need that.

Of course I know that's nonsense.  Any artistic or creative enterprise requires a dialogue with an inner five-year-old, and that five-year-old needs a big cheering committee sometimes, especially when she's been living inside of a small box for too long.

Now the poetry is taking over again anyway, because who can stop from writing poetry surrounded by all these blossoms?

So I'll start the 30-in-30 challenge today, just before the new moon, and continue every day through the next new moon.  Along the way I'll find ways to cheer for the five-year-old, and (with luck) keep it up this time after the 30 days are over.  Will report back on the progress.

It isn't too late to join me.  Never too late, actually.

Here is today's poem:

violet flower
stalk water-green,
translucent cells
rising in tiny spring spirals

deep purple petals
unfolding like a fan
in the hand of a flamenco dancer

inward wrist circling outward
down circling up
meeting the sun
for a half-life
of pure delight

In the comments I'd love it if you'd leave your own poem of course, and/or an answer to this question:

What or who encourages your inner five-year-old to be creative? 

On breaking unwritten rules

Happy Moonday.  Its a waning gibbous-- three weeks give or take before May's full flower moon and an excellent time for spring cleaning and the release of worn-out habits before the new moon.

I've never been one to obey a rule or code if it strikes me as nonsensical or unfair.  One that I simply can't abide is the unwritten rule that a woman should not be alone in city parks after dark.  If 'bad things' happen, well, what was she thinking?  As an intrepid city herbalist I find myself alone at night in city parks with some frequency.  I do usually bring my dogs.

Sunset.  I'm on my hands and knees on the ground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, gathering a wild, abundant medicinal plant called cleavers, Galium aparine.   I'm determined to gather enough to make a quart of tincture (a lot) because this is the lushest, largest patch of cleavers I've ever seen, and its a plant that I need for my own healing.  I've been searching the park for  hours, and have finally found it.  But its getting late. The sun goes down.

When I make herbal medicine I thank every plant as I harvest, and I chant or sing as I go.  On this, the first almost warm spring night, I'm chanting Ya-Hadi, a Sufi chant, ya (invocation) Hadi (the Guide or Guidance).

Even though its a dark moon and I'm harvesting by thin orange lamp light, I can make out the cleavers easily by their distinctive shape like successive Doctor Seuss umbrellas on a chain and the way they cleave to my fingers, as their name implies. Their stalks are rough like cat tongues.

I've long known about cleavers' reputation for soothing swollen lymph, and have taken it for this myself, but beyond that our relationship has been somewhat superficial until now.

As I'm harvesting, I'm intently 'listening' for what the plant has to say about itself.  It gives itself up so easily.  I feel that this is an excellent herb both for physical and emotional flexibility.  (Its used to treat arthritis, as it turns out.)

I've almost gathered enough when the tall dead mugwort stalks I'm sitting under start to snap and I turn  to see a large man looming over me.  I let out the deep growling warrior's bellow my father taught me.  The man jumps back.

He is not a threat, at least not to me in this moment.

I say, 'I'm sorry I shouted, but you know, you startled me.'

He replies, 'That scream... I know you are a macho girl.  You have machisimo.

'Yes,' I reply.

'You are very lonely?' he asks.

Its important that the plants have good energy around them at all times when I'm gathering and making medicine, so after letting him know that no, I'm not lonely, not at all, I tell him what I'm doing, show him the cleavers, and explain some of their medicine.

'It give me energy?' I say it will.  'Delicious?' I tell him no.  Its bitter.  Good for the liver, like all bitter herbs.  He tries it anyway, and says nothing.

I turn away from him and continue to chant and gather.  He stands and watches me.

After about ten minutes I've gathered enough.  Earlier I had collected a small bag of silvery green spring mugwort tops for tea and wild dandelion greens for salad.  I can't find the brown paper bag in the dark.  I ask if the man will help me to look for it.   We find the bag. I thank him and say goodbye.

'Be safe!' he says.

'You too!' I reply. 

Cleavers definitely helps increase emotional flexibility.   (And next time I'll bring my dogs.  I'm happy to talk to curious onlookers, but don't want them sneaking up on me when I'm deep in a plant conversation.)

What is an 'unwritten rule' you sometimes (or often) break?

As its Moonday, I'd also love it if you would post poems or art of any kind in the comments.

Full Egg Moon: What Are You Hatching?

Happy full Moonday!  Today is the first full moon of spring, commonly known as the egg moon, which makes me think: what are you hatching?

The word that keeps coming up for me is freedom.  Several years ago I opened a door to find a man holding a gun an inch from my chest.

After that experience I felt a kind of freedom I'd never had before.   I lost all self-consciousness.  I would wear rainbow socks and sing as loud as I liked.   This faded after awhile, and I've been wanting to get that feeling back ever since without another gun.

Photo by Alan Houghton

On a recent light grey afternoon I went for a walk through the grimer part of my neighborhood on my way to East River Park, down by the Williamsburg Bridge which feels like a forgotten, liminal place.

I had been thinking about my grandparents house, a place I had adored, and how I hadn't gotten to say goodbye to it as the contents were emptied and the house was sold when I was in college.

I was thinking about that and about the movie Up, (which no one had warned me would make fat rivers shoot out of my eyes during the film's first 20 minutes), when I came across a room-sized open metal box.

Inside it was a broken table and chairs, lots of upholstered furniture, chipped odds and ends.  Near the front of the box was an upturned, formidably sized television encased in an an ornate wooden cabinet with drawers.  Upside down it somehow reminded me of Cyclops's eye.

And then there was a old wooden trunk like a treasure chest, big enough to hide in.  Of course I had to open it.  Inside I found yellowed newspapers that happened to be from the year I was born.  There were some electronic parts, and sealed in plastic, a green rafia hula skirt complete with a carved out coconut husk bra.   

The collection as a whole had clearly been the furnishings of someone's life.  I stood back for a moment to witness it fully.  Then I imagined my own apartment inside the box instead.    I picked up the hula skirt.  It weighed almost nothing.  I took it. 

When I got home, I found some hula videos on you tube, put on the skirt (the coconut bra didn't fit, sadly), some rainbow socks, and danced.

In the comments, I'd love it if you'd share what's hatching in your life... what qualities of experience-- adventure, freedom, love, forgiveness, mercy, etc...  And as always, any offerings of art or poetry on this or any theme are greatly appreciated.

Slower and Lazier

Sleeplessly 
I watch over
the spring night--
but no amount of guarding 
is enough to make it stay.
 by Izumi Shikibu

----------------------------------

march sun
i dream of the farm
even during the day
as it was
as it became since
trees growing thick in fields
even the blackberries
once rampant
succumbing to their shade
i remember the call
the chill sun of that day
your hands
wet birds
your eyes cloudy clay
i miss the chestnut walls
sheltering hills
the trees dressing
for spring
softness of worn stones
found in
abandoned roads

by @ten_ten_ten on twitter.  Here is his poetry blog.  As far as I know he wants to be anonymous beyond this... (Just in case you weren't aware, twitter is a great place to meet poets.)

Late March Moonday. Its just after the Spring equinox, with a waxing crescent.   Today on the south side of Tompkins Square park I noticed that the daffodils were in full bloom.  I find it almost painful to look at daffodils because it makes me sad to see them crisp in the hot sun and fade.  It seems to happen so soon after they bloom. Spring is ruled by all of these gorgeous, short-lived blossoms.  We all deserve a holiday from our lives just to appreciate them properly.

As that hasn't been declared yet,  my antidote is to go into Pooh bear mode whenever I can.

Be slower and lazier.  I want to feel my spring.

Even in my 'leisure time' as a gardener I can get overwhelmed by the amount of work there is to do now-- all the pruning, readying the soil for planting, clearing away the dead brush-- but the plants grow without me.  The mint grows around its long dead stalks, the un-pruned apple tree bore fruit for years without anyone's help but the sun and the rain.

So today I'm just taking it in.   

In the comments, I'd love it if you'd share something of your experience of the spring-- this one or any other.  Do you have a picture in your head that says 'spring' to you from yesterday, last year, or twenty years ago?

I'd also be thrilled if you shared poetry or art, yours or someone's who inspires you.

monsters, perfect dads, and Frida Kahlo

Moonday.  New moon.  We are in the darkness before the light of spring which happens officially on the 20th of this month.  Its an excellent time for going in deep.  That's what I've been trying to do.

I've been having some trouble writing recently.  I need to make some minor adjustments to my play before it can go on to its next phase, several other projects want more attention, and then there is this little blog I love that hasn't seen a post in a week.

I called up a good friend to talk about it. 

'Well,' I said, 'I have a lot going on, but I think that what's really been stopping me are my limiting beliefs.'  She laughed.  'Do I sound too psycho-babbly?' I asked. 

'No,' she said.  'I just don't hear that very often.  Its refreshing.' 

'Oh!' It was like she'd pinned a gold star on my cardigan.

I told her what was stopping me.  It was this thought:

Its too hard to make a living as a writer, so you shouldn't even try.   

I know its origin.  When I was a little kid pounding away happily on the electric typewriter, my dad sat me down.  He told me that only two percent of writers make their living at it.  I needed to find something else to do.  Writing for fun was great, but find another job.

To my child's ears he meant that I would never be good enough at the thing I loved to do the most.

Many, if not most people have a version of this story, some way more intense than mine.  There is usually some doom-sayer along the way-- a friend, a teacher, often someone with good intentions, and no amount of singing the Wonderful World of Disney theme song can shake them out of the mind.

'Its a monster' I said. 

'What do you do with monsters?' my friend asked.

'First you turn on the light, and then... you help them.'  I said, remembering one of my favorite Rilke quotes:

'perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us.' 

'How do you help them?' she  asked.

'I don't know. That's the problem.'

What do you think your monster wants?' she asked.

'She wants a good dad.  She felt abandoned by her dad.'

'You might have to be her dad,' my friend said.  And then she said, 'Frida Kahlo. That just popped into my mind.' Its great having intuitive friends.

That was it.  I love Frida Kahlo.  I adore her work, her inspiring life story, and I love the way she would usually wear these timeless colorful skirts, and then show up in a suit.

I'm like that.  I'm a bit of a princess with a dash of drag king.  I live mostly in silk, but occasionally I lust after herringbone jackets, french cuff shirts, wide legged pants and fedoras.

 
So now I'm assembling my perfect dad costume for my monster.    He looks good in a hat.  His shoes match his belt and umbrella.  But he looks comfortable, gentle, like an abused animal might follow him home.  He's basically a mix between Johhny Depp, my super stylish and wildly encouraging college design professor, and my grandpa.  My monster is delighted.  My perfect dad tells her that she can be anything she sets her heart on. (Yes, like the Disney song says.)

*For the record, I have a pretty good adult relationship with my real dad now, and wouldn't change him, even though he still thinks that John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever is the pinnacle of style.

This moonday, I'm thinking about monsters and how I can help them.  If you want to share a story, or some inspirational art, quote, or poems that help you to help your monsters... I would love to see/read them.
Happy Moonday!

a plant for peaceful warrior women and wise men

This week's Moonday Post...

These last few days have felt like spring in Manhattan with brilliant blue skies and a carnival atmosphere on the streets of the East Village.

Yesterday I walked by children carrying bunches of cut daffodils and people dancing to jazz music in Tompkins Square Park.

I was on my way to a friend's house with my dogs, weighed down by bags of produce from the green market, when a man passed me a little too closely and shouted some rape-y comments.  Really violent things.

That almost never happens to me.  I have a pretty good force field, but it was down.  I wasn't prepared after a winter of automatic shielding by the cold and layers of warm clothes.

What popped into my head was the chant we all learned in elementary school, 'I'm rubber and your glue whatever you say bounces off me and sticks onto you', which I muttered as I passed.

I'm blessed to know lots of men who actively discourage cat calling.  I'm grateful too to all of the parents and teachers who work had to bring up boys with respect for women (such as my mother in law).  But the most instantaneous way I've found to discourage cat calling is to change my posture, my attitude, my vibe.  I don't allow it into my space.

Today I'm off to the park to restrengthen that force field.    I want to see if artemisia vulgaris, mugwort, is popping her head up yet.  Artemisia has the namesake of Artemis, Goddess of the hunt, the moon, protector of animals, the young, and the wilderness.   Like the goddess Artemis, Artemisia vulgaris is a moon plant.  The backside of the leaves are silver, like moonlight.

The plant artemisia is very subtly psychotropic (mind-altering) when ingested or burned as smudge.  It can enhance the vividness and recall of dreams, strengthen intuition, and deepen a person's relationship to nature.  It grows all over the world in various forms.

This plant has helped me to gain a sense of independence and inner strength.  I've enlisted its (her) wisdom to help others also come to trust their own intuitions, their 'gut' feelings.  

Its a plant par excellence for wild, fearless women and men, and I'd go so far as to say that its a remedy for cat calling.  Artemisia brings out the peaceful warrior in women and the wise woman in men.

There is a fierceness about the plant that has nothing to do with aggression. Artemisia helps us to stand tall with our shoulders back while moving with precision, grace, and a steady gaze, effortlessly discerning when we can relax, and when we need to be alert.

Right now I'm imagining Mr. Rapey-Comments sitting in the park somewhere with a large clump of mugwort.  He finds himself drifting off.  He starts to dream.

In the dream he comes across Artemis.  He was watching her bathe. She looks at him.  He thinks, 'oh shit',  his brain tunes into the collective unconscious and he remembers the part of the myth where Artemis turns a dude into a stag who is torn apart by dogs.  Only this time she transforms him into a woman in Manhattan in the spring.

There are lots of men out whistling, shouting, and hooting at women on the street.   He, now a woman, comes across himself as a man.  He hears his male self speak violating, ugly words.  They reverberate inside his female body.

He opens his eyes, changed.  He has heard his words as a form of self-hatred, and with this knowledge he begins, slowly, to heal.

Do you have a good cat calling story?  Some time when you were able to shift the energy? 

Wishing you a wild, happy Moonday.

Herbal footnotes:

There's lots of fantastic info on the medicinal uses of artemesia vulgaris.  Here are some links to great sources:  Susan Weed,

Henriette's Herbal (a compedium of excellent articles)

When its very young, artemisia is a light mint green and tastes pleasantly bitter.  Its used a lot in cooking and medicine in Asia.  In acupuncture its burned as moxa.  Like all bitters, its excellent for the liver and digestion, and so is a potent addition to the diet this time of year when our livers are all craving some t.l.c. after the winter.

Pregnant women should avoid it internally, though they can still benefit from its dream and intuition powers by sleeping with it in dream pillow or hanging out with the plant in the park.  

Artemisia is everywhere, so once you know what it looks like, you'll always have a friend around.

Moonday Experiment-- Unleashing Your Wild Creativity

Moonday, just after the full snow moon last night.  If this is the first you've heard of it, let me explain.  This marks week 9 of the Moonday Experiment, designed to help me, and whoever else wants to play, to take a little time out on Mondays to celebrate the moon by doing something creative and/or wild despite the dominant culture's referendum on Monday wildness.  Moonday is a day (or just an hour) to let loose creatively-- throw caution to the wind and be creative for creativity's sake-- ie. wild.  The comments here are meant to be a place to share creative impulses and/or inspirations, meaning you can share your own art or links (poetry, visual art, stories, dance, etc.) or the art of someone who inspires you. 

 

Image by Catrin Welz-Stein-- I adore her haunting, dream-like illustrations.

Personal update:  I seem to be in a 'bubbling' phase-- not a lot of output, but lots of connections happening in my mind and body.  Consistently giving myself permission to just have fun in the realm of art seems to be shifting something internally.  We'll see if it ends up influencing my writing.  I've been excited to get feedback from some of you saying that Moonday is helping to open up your creativity.

Last night while walking on East 11th Street,  a friend and I came across a large pile of bright blue Encyclopedia Americanas with gold embossed eagles on their fronts next to a pile of garbage bags surrounded by the dirty melting snow.  I picked one up from the top of the pile.  Skin to Sumac.  Copyright 1975.  There are articles on Stream of Consciousness, Sonic Boom, Squaw-fish Squid, Stained Glass, Stalin... I can't wait to chop it up and make some collages based entirely on words and images beginning with the letter S.

I wrote about how collage helps me out of creative ruts and puts me in touch with my subconscious (also in the Encyclopedia Americana) back when no one at all was reading this blog.  If you're interested, you can read it here.

So, join in, please?  Post a poem (it doesn't have to be one that you wrote), a link to a story, art you made, art you love-- or play the stream of consciousness game, a verbal form of collage. Write down the first 10 words that come into your head when you read this word:  fruitcake

Happy Moonday!

Moonday Salon-- Post your Creative Thoughts

This is week 8 of the Moonday Experiment.  A close friend of mine who actually reads my blog was confused by Moonday.  She thought that there was only one Moonday post.  So that means I haven't been clear enough.  Moonday is my weekly response to Monday.  It is me zapping the "do! do! do! go! go! go! hurry hurry hurry!" chant in my head with a different energy, Moon energy. Its a way for me to honor the intuitive and creative on a day that is known for being all about business.  As I'm an artist who does my level best to do something creative every day, I use Moondays to do something-- at least a tiny little something-- uninhibited and for sheer love of the thing, without a thought to whether or not its good.


I've been encouraging people to participate in the experiment by sharing their creative ideas and outpourings in this supportive space in the comments.  There haven't been many takers yet, but the ones who have shared something have been incredible and so much fun.

This Moonday I will be dancing at the Metropolitan Building at 7 PM (its free if anyone happens to be reading this and lives in NYC) with Dunya Dianne McPherson's Dunyati Alembic.  The Alembic is meditative dance, Sufi practices translated for performance.  Our director's instructions are simple but challenging: relax and breathe.  Our job is to stay inside of our bodies, and not to think 'is it good, is it bad, do they get it?'  just stay with ourselves and let the dance unfold.  It feels profoundly healing to dance in this way with witnesses, and our hope is that its also deeply relaxing to watch. We've gotten some great responses that indicate that it is.

So that fulfills the Moonday quota!  And this completely unedited post does, too. 

I'd absolutely adore it if you'd join in.  Post a link to your site with your artwork/videos/poetry/etc.  Share some writing-- a thought, a poem-- in the comments-- it can be a quote that inspires you, too.  Or a link to some art of any kind that inspires your own creative freedom.

That seems to be the theme bubbling up in me today.  Freedom.  Inner Revolution.  So if you like, answer this question:  When do you feel free?  Where are you?  What are you doing?

Happy Moonday!

Sending Loving Kindness to Myself... Circa 1992

Moonday.  Just after the new moon, the start of the year of the Tiger, Valentine's and V day.

I feel the pull to turn inward, retreat.  After some powerful healing work this week with my Dancemeditation community, I'm standing very close to a young me.  Fifteen.  She is full of self-hatred worn like thick dragon-scaled armor.  She loves Rilke and the Bronte's.  She likes to sit on the jagged brown outcroppings and stare at the roiling river, especially because she's not supposed to be there.  Her chest is sunken.  Suicide seems romantic.  There are bars in her eyes.  Her voice sounds shrill and brittle in her head.

Books are rafts.  Dogs are guardian angels.  Nature is Mother. Those things haven't changed.  This is a poem she loves. Today I send her my love, laughter, and I'm listening.

The night is darkening round me
The wild winds coldly blow
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot cannot go


The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow
And the storm is fast descending
And yet I cannot go

Clouds beyond clouds above me
Wastes beyond wastes below
But nothing drear can move me
I will not cannot go


O mother I am not regretting
To leave this wretched world below
If there be nothing but forgetting
In that dark land to which I go


Yet though tis wretched now to languish
Deceived and tired and hopeless here
No heart can quite repress the anguish
Of leaving things that once were dear

--Emily Bronte

(It goes on and on like that.)

If you have a poem, song lyrics, an image, or a thought that a younger self who could use a little TLC might enjoy, I'd love it if you'd share it in the comments, or any other Moonday artistry.

Deep Dark Moonday

Happy Moonday!

'Why, what's Moonday?' you ask.  I'll tell you. This marks week six of the Moonday Experiment, designed to help me, and whoever else wants to play, to take a little time out on Mondays to celebrate the moon by doing something creative and/or wild despite the dominant culture's referendum on Monday wildness, in the hope that it will spark some of our own wildness and unbridled creativity.

Personal update on the experiment:  I've been having a bit more fun playing around.  Last Moonday I collaged a card in my journal.  I decided that it was a note from my fairy godmother telling me that she had my back, used lots of glitter, and the next day I happened to find the perfect dress for an upcoming performance-- bippity boppity boo.

If you've been reading this blog for a little while, you might have noticed that I've been sort of play-challenged recently, and have had to go to some lengths to bring out my silly side.  Celebrating Moonday every week seems to be helping me to get over myself loosen up.

Today's waning crescent moon is going into the darkest phase of a dark month.  I shouldn't be surprised that I'm feeling internal, desiring to hole up.  I long for a snowy cabin and silence.  Spring is just around the corner, and for a gardener that means work.  I have a lot more deep dreaming to do between now and then. 

I've been thrilled by the stories, poems, and links to artwork in the comments each Moonday.  They are fantastic.  Worth checking out.  Skip over my old Moonday posts and go right to the comments.  I hope some of you will grace me with your Moonday inspirations again or for the first time this week. If you would share a poem, or links to artwork, stories, songs, dances... any art--in the broadest sense of the word-- that you want to share or that inspires you.  No theme, just something that jazzes you up, that makes you want to dance, or  bust out your crayons, a poem or scribble you made in a burst of exuberance or  painstakingly crafted (though I am very pro burst of exuberance creating--- internal critics can go stand in the corner.)

Here's mine-- my internal critic wants to warn you that it may not be very good at all, especially as I'm making it up on the spot.  Now I'm putting duct tape over her mouth.  Ah.  Better.

Slippery green snake
undulating in a bowl of twigs and dead leaves,
your back glistens with honey,
your forked tongue flicking in and out
for the delight of the feeling.

You ate the eggs last summer.
The birds have long since flown.
You are alone and sated
in a nest under a broken hive
honey-coated against the cold.

Happy Wolf Moonday!

Happy Moonday!  Its just past the full wolf or purge moon, which this year happens to be one of the biggest and brightest of the year.

This marks week 5 of the Moonday Experiment, designed to help me, and whoever else wants to play, to take a little time out on Mondays to celebrate the moon by doing something creative and/or wild despite the dominant culture's referendum on Monday wildness. 

Personal update on the experiment:  Lots of  exciting creativity seems to be seeping into my life from all sorts of places.  This is making me happy.  Something is shifting...

Today is also my very dear friend Eve's birthday and so my Moonday offering this week is a poem about Eve the first in honor of both of them.  

From  Applesauce for Eve by Marge Piercy

You are indeed the mother of invention,
the first scientist. Your name means
life: finite, dynamic, swimming against
the current of time, tasting, testing,
eating knowledge like any other nutrient.
We are all the children of your bright hunger.
We are all products of that first experiment,
for if death was the worm in that apple,
the seeds were freedom and the flowering of choice.

                                                       Picture of Eve's Apple, sculpture by Edwina Sandys
 
I would love it (actually, I'm squeezing my eyes shut, crossing my fingers tightly, and holding my breath) if you would share a poem, either one of your own or another one that you like, links to artwork, stories, songs, dances... any art--in the broadest sense of the word-- that you want to share or that inspires you.  May your day and night be peppered with unbridled laughter, wise foolishness, and unexpected delights.

A Month of Moondays

I officially started the Moonday Experiment a month ago.  The idea is to take a little time out every Monday to celebrate the moon, as the day was originally dedicated to this heavenly body.  Our culture currently has an implied ban on merry making and wildness on Monday.  'Good T.V.' after a grueling day of work and commerce is the dominant trend.

The Moon has long been associated with creativity, intuition, and wildness.  It makes me sad thinking of how disappointed the moon would be if it could look down and see how we spend our Mondays.  I've wanted to see what would happen if some of us do something creative and/or wild on Mondays to celebrate the moon.  I decided that on Moondays I would do something creative just for fun. Meeting my writing goals doesn't count.

So far I've seen a subtle shift in my attitude towards Monday.  I've noticed that the busy list-making part of my mind that wants to get the work week started with a 'bang', isn't in complete control.  Sunday I found myself actually looking forward to that art time on Monday, despite also needing to get some nagging tasks accomplished.  Thus far celebrating Moonday hasn't stopped me from going to the bank and the post office, but it has made me care a little bit less if I get everything on my list accomplished.

On Moonday I will reflect on wildness,' I thought to myself on Sunday.  'Maybe I'll even find a way to be a little wild.... Hmm.  And I'll take time out to read poetry and do some art-making, just for fun....'  Yay Moonday! You are so much more fun than Monday.

I've asked everyone who thinks it sounds like fun to join me in this experiment and celebrate Moonday in your own ways, as well as to post stories of wildness, links to art of all kinds including dance, theater, visual art, poems, etc.  To write about your dreams, your thoughts on wildness...  If you haven't been spelunking in the comments you've missed some inspiring stuff, so here, here, and here, are the links to the previous three weeks posts.  Just go straight to the comments. 

I'd love it if you would share something, anything that you like, but here are some questions if you want a prompt:  The moon is often associated with insanity. In an effort to take back that lunar intuitive wisdom, the question is, what is one of the most crazy/brilliant ideas you or someone else has ever had?  Or an idea that seemed at first to make no sense, but somehow was just the thing....  For me, it was deciding to take up dancing when I was very stuck in my writing.  If I hadn't, I truly doubt I'd be writing this sentence now.

Happy Waxing Gibbous (nearing full ) Moonday!