I Insist

Ahh we come now to the bend of ascension through Earth and Fire.  There are lots of hills and valleys, switchbacks and beautiful vistas on the human journey.  Once again: clear boundaries, exceptional will power, stamina, sheer belief in the impossibility of failure, vertical realities.  It has been 3 years now of this.  And new habits are finally taking root.  We humans, we learn very very slowly ;-)

In the newspaper today I read about the new release of my favorite hop-hop artist, Lupe Fiasco.  It's a hidden/not hidden metaphorical/literal manifesto of his most recent struggle.  I relate.  In the major uphill of legalese I walked last autumn Lupe's music carried me,his songs of ghetto redemption driving my blood to boil as I fashioned the first of what may be many manifestos. Thirty-five pages of jargon I wrote to provide a foundation for light.  Ho.  The judge signed it into law January 4th and I received my certified copy in the mail.  Shortly after we landed the children and I co-created an 8 point set of rules for our house.  Number eight says, "in all your actions remember you are loved".  I/you/we relate as artists to the upgrading/processing/unwinding of patterns via the creative act.  Studios are sacred ground.  Thoughts made there manifest as exterior life.  

Two weeks ago, I entered a dance of fire, which will showcase next Tuesday and Wednesday night in Cambridge.  This was the result of the first rehearsal: 
1. I take total responsibility for my emotions and emotional health.
2. I make and use clear boundaries about what I am and am not willing to do.
3. I take total responsibility for the financial well being of my family.  I rock it out as the matriarch.
4. I am open to relationships of all varieties which simply delight me.
5. I make no apologies for being the bright and beautiful star that I am.
It's a hot dance!  In the doing of what is set before me, I also stage a version of grief upon the stage next Thursday, and a version of tenderness on Friday, which feels really really good.


And in growing slowly, sensuality takes form, incarnating and ascending us in rapid replay and quick freshness, fast tides over/upon primary respiration.  Huuuuuuuu Allah Hu de Alim 4eva.  

British Seas

Swish~  That's a door opening.  On Monday I will perform with British Sea Power as part of an online series of live performance.  It is a fascinating project!  The technology, hacked from Kinect- Microsoft's response to the Wii- records, edits, and transmits digitally live time.  At rehearsals last week we were recording my movement with the Kinect inspired software in development by the crew.  It works with infrared imaging and responds to movement as the basis for editing choices.  With the recorded movements the software then pre-designs possible edits of the cameras and they are literally choreographed for the event.  The real delicious part of it all is the underlying aspect chance will play!  With many stored possibilities we all show up and perform for the space, perform for/with the cameras, perform for the live audience, and what is simply is.  There is no going back to the editing room, no air brushing of the lead singer, no back up vocalists added to the mix.  We are live, we are online, Feb 28th 9pm Greenwich Mean time.  The show lasts 20 minutes. Hu~

http://www.myspace.com/roundhouseblackbox

Daughters

We have reached that age, eyes roll and tears spin out in breathy gasps, everything seems so unfair!  Delicate and fragile, the nearly nine year old child becomes self conscious in a very new way.  Such tender handling is needed, not to break the sapling, as the self rises in flow with these early hormonal rushes.  Luckily, there are many great avenues to turn toward: peaceful parenting, love and logic, anthroposophy, and my daughters very nature.  These tell me that she desires responsibility, something to love, close connection on her terms, physical activity.  We are reading Ramona all over again (having read 4 of the books a few years ago), this time she reads some of the chapters to me.  She is taking yoga, swimming, cycling to school.  She wants more!  Ice skating and breakdancing too.  I'll have to see what I can do.  But the biggest and best part, is that she was offered a guinea pig to love and care for.  Daffodil came to our home, complete with indoor hutch, outdoor hutch, garden run, bales of hay, bags of food, and toys.  Every step of the way through our adventures, exactly what we need and desire has been laid before us.  Welcome Daffodil.  Next, I become friends with the ice dancers of the area, if there are any to be found! =)

16 Years

The most difficult part of being across the Atlanctic from my homeland is the fact that my teenager stayed there.  13 years of joy and cacophany, and then it was time to share him with the world.  Today he will not take cupcakes into school, he will be getting his drivers license!!  Happy Birthday Kaiah!  With Love. 

Contracts

Life Giver

My children like to play to with my cell phone, taking random pictures and pretending to call China, what child doesn't?  Last week they changed my ring-tone to that wonderful song from the 60's, "It's a gift to be simple, It's a gift to be free, It's a gift to come home where we like to be".  Delight is in the details~


Two weeks ago my drier arrived.  I happily live without a car.  I will not, however, continue to find creative ways of stringing laundry across my kitchen.  This is not Siberia, and I am a posh spoilt American in the end.  Being also a granola loving hippy in the end, I find the lived in mess of daily life so comforting...and the meows of our cat, and long naps, and hot chocolate.  Delight is in the senses~


One week ago today, we were in a major car accident.  Mathias bolted into a very busy intersection without stopping, and it really happened, he was hit by a car going at a very fast speed.  The car swerved, tried to stop, Mathias took the impact on his left side.  That boy, sitting in the ambulance, just kept talking about texting his friends that he really got to see the inside.  He grilled them about every detail he saw, and walked away without so much as a single scratch or bruise!  "Mom", he said, "the angel saved me."  Life Giver Aho!  Every day I wrap them in angelic love.  That day I did it twice for good measure.  Delight is in the big things~~~


As we gather close to each other in the aftermath of, of, of everything, I think repeatedly on a story told often by our sheikh in London.  "There is a traditional Chinese fable that illustrates the need to reverse our ordinary way of thinking and of viewing events.  It tells of how a poor farmer had a horse that ran off into the country of the barbarians.  All his neighbours offered their condolences but the farmer said, 'How do you know that this isn't good fortune?'  A few months later the horse returned bringing with it a barbarian's horse of excellent stock.  All his neighbors offered their congratulations but the farmer said, 'How do you know that this isn't a disaster?'  The two horses bred and soon the farmer had a whole herd of fine horses.  One day when the farmer's son was riding one of them he fell off and broke his hipbone.  All the neighbours offered the farmer their condolences but he said, 'How do you know this isn't good fortune?'  A year later the barbarians invaded the frontier and all the fit young men were called up and most of them died in the war but the farmer's son survived.  Thus good fortune can be disaster and vice-versa.  Who can tell how events will be transformed?  So we can learn to turn around the view we have of almost all the events in our lives."  Delight is in deepest trust and knowing~  It is a delight so deep and normal as to be missed...the sound of a drier, the glow of a radiator, the smell of a starry night holding a new contract on life.  To be a chalice of earth, that is all I desire now.  It contains universes of love.  Aho!


Jacobs, Philip. 2006. Oneself: Life as a Means of Transformation. Winchester: O Books. 111-112.

Chalice

 

~O sun she rises, shakes out her fiery mane, purple and windy on a glorious song~

Joyous Year of the Rabbit!

Structures of crystal and light 

the very essence 

of this new life

Thank you