Laska's First snow and the Charlie's Angels Dog Club

The Gang!!!













She is so Foxy!

When i first brought Laska home she couldn't really run, she may never have run before in her two years.  But now she loves to run, and be chased.  She's as fast as any dog now!

To see the whole set of these photos you can go HERE

and then, well there is my couch and how great it looks with dogs

and then their's Spanky!

I love her speckles!  She is so photogenic!

While Lorka is more like a father figure to Laska, Spanky is her sister.  They are about the same age and can just play for hours.  Laska Foxy Lady love love loves to be thrown down by Spanky.  I look forward to getting some good photos of that in the future.

Lorka & Laska

Lorka is one of the first dogs that i have gotten to know so intimately.  It is her shy obedient nature that made me believe i could have a dog.  While Lorka is very submissive in nature, she exudes a confidence and was a great help in teaching Laska Foxy Lady how to walk in the Santa Fe River with out fear.  Laska will follow Lorka anywhere.







Thank you Lorka!!!

Laska Foxy Lady has entered my life

First day i brought her home.  She had been in the pound for about three weeks.  They thought she had probably been chained in a yard with other dogs.  She was afraid of people and houses, all transitions like doorways were terrifying for her. 

Daughter like mother, she loves the mirror.  She has been much easier to train when other dogs are around, funny, so she trained her self to play by watching herself in the mirror.

Family over Thanksgiving

Dad received his healing wand, sorry i didn't get photos of that moment, he was like a little kid.

one of my nephews is a budding photographer and captured me here.

To see the whole set go HERE

Dad

dad sledding from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

When I am not here where do I go?

I said I was committed to staying creative no matter what mood I enter into.  I forgot.
Because, but, because… if I become vacant how can I do anything?!
Lack of creative inspiration = vacancy of myself 
It certainly has been a symptom in the past.  I don’t feel like talking here now about the how and why I’m too tired of my stories now.  I just want to get back to it and let it be revealed to me without my mind trying so hard to figure it all out.
Photo down load to come soon to show where I have been, to connect again to myself, to see what it is that I am seeing and feeling, to take a little step back to me that is connected.
It seems strange that I need self-documentation to sense I’m alive?
Like I find myself sometimes needing to say out loud through out my day that is often alone, “this is my life.”  So I can really get it.
And recently I walk around saying, “I have a dog!”  because I’m still in a bit of shock that I have this little big being that is fully dependent on me, and who she becomes is a reflection of me somehow, so I better do this right and not mess this up.  I never wanted a child exactly because of that.  I new I would not be able to face the disappointment of myself through who the child became and what if she hated me!  And now horror I am a mother!  I’ve always been a cat person, and somehow with cats the mother thing really didn’t happen for me.  A cat didn’t need me so much and that felt really good. 
Slowly over the last year more dogs started coming into my life, even a wolf dog stayed at my house for a bit and that’s when I new, nature is asking something of me.  I thought it was to just finally get a dog, I don’t think I completely comprehended the amount of expansion of myself was being requested. 
“Selflessness”  ba humbug… this word has been so spoiled in my mind, my body cringes and wants to through a tantrum, memories of serving my guru till there was no light left in me.  Memories of my self disappearing into some greater purpose, and then that purpose even being lost because there was no one left to feel the purpose.  And memories of loosing myself into my partner’s pain believing that I was responsible for her pain and happiness.  And memories of feeling so small in the presence of my mothers overwhelming need for my happiness that would be the food for her self-fulfillment.

And now, I remember, YES!  That is why I must stay creatively engaged; it is where I can be rebelliously myself! 

And, I am someone that can’t resist giving of my self and I remember the bliss that comes from loosing myself in another… and so now “I have a dog!”  Not a guru or a partner, a dog!  Actually, the dog spirit has brought with it a lover.  So there is a knowing that this new dogie is bringing me back to hopefully knowing love in some new healthy way.

Dog + Art =  whole heArted self

spell received and incense ignited, feeling the strength of who I’m becoming, two owls on this full moon night, blue garage door closed for the last time, tears trickled down as i left that hill, lovers nibbles on the back of my neck like chocolate kisses, running threw the river in the dark windy night, two dogs chasing me, friend sleeps in my guest bed, all is beautiful and right.

Tonight was my last time at my old house, happened to be a full moon.

Flash Flood

The Santa Fe Art Institute, in coordination with Bill McKibben’s 350.org, spearheaded the New Mexico FLASH FLOOD for a living river project (go here to see more details http://sfai.org/flashflood.html )


At least 1000 gathered this morning in the dry Santa Fe River bed to fill it with Blue, blue painted cardboard and blue tarps.  From satellite photos were taken of all of us turning the river brown to blue.


It was a beautiful way to express our love for our river and our community, all kinds of people showed up.
 

I find it ironic that not so long ago i had entered this very same spot in the river, painted blue and in search of the spirit of water.

Below is the video that came out of that day, and now this video is showing in the gallery exhibit that went along with today's river event.  

With out this river that runs behind my house now, i'm not sure i would have survived, and actually creatively thrived, this move away from my old house.  And another coincidence my house is going into closing tomorrow!  I have been crying all day since leaving the river with everyone in it this morning.  Grieving, it feels like a death of a family member, selling this house.  And then there is also the grieving of the loss of my "mate" that i had shared that home with.  The grief of loosing the one i had called home, my love.  

The river caught me, gave me a safe bed to land in, so i would be inspired to let go of all That.  So that i would know there is more to live for than that person i thought was my all in all.  Now i feel the river this way, she is my home now.  And to know that there are so many others that feel this love for her... to go from feeling so alone and isolated in my big house over looking Santa Fe, to the comfort of a community that loves our river bed... blue tears move threw me on so many levels right now.  

The river is dry, but in me it runs freely.

There is a way that i pray, that these tears are not just for me, but that my grief may call forth the flow of the Santa Fe River again.  That as layers of self absorbed tears are released i may be free to love and act from love in a larger way, love for the life of our earth, love that shows me how to serve.


Sucking Rock Finding Water from Mano Sipowicz on Vimeo.

Beautiful moon rise as i went to my first show in a gallery last night