The Recipe that Makes Mano

Sometimes everything in life conspires to open the mind.
As I lay in the hot bath tonight I could feel the edges of my mind softening where there had been hard walls.  It seems like it is a very particular recipe that made this mind expansion possible tonight.
 

1. Committing to caring for a dog
2. Committing to a permanent tattoo
3. Using my brain in ways I didn’t know I could – break-throughs in learning Final Cut.
4. Writing writing writing for my new writing class all those years of silence unleashed.
5. Finally got to fuck a cunt to full pleasure (note this is icing on my cake)
 

too many #’s to count really, the recipe that makes Mano is endless.  As i have said before this whole blog has been part of putting the pieces together so Mano can feel whole.
I am here to testify, there is no limit to who I am!

On This Full Moon Night

On this fill moon night I commit to following the sensations of pleasure rather than suffering.
I do not deny the pain that comes from expanding this limited mind.
I choose to delight in it all!
I can distinguish between the two, for I wear the butterfly goddess on my arm fresh with initiation into all things beautiful!
On this full moon night I choose to lead others to pleasure rather than focus on their suffering or eat it as if it was my own, no more.
Here forth my home is refuge
Friends come!
find relaxation, and indulgence of delightfulness here, haahaaha! 
All cooks invited to create and freaks to hang from the loft.
Beauty surrounds me as my feet touch cool sand.
Beauty surrounds me as my voice howls to the white ball in the middle of blackness.
Beauty is this home.
Beauty is this body.
Beauty is all lovers
I touch with delight.
Behold my flesh tonight
tingles with life.
Dog holds sacred the circle of protection so wildness may rain its sweet nectar.
In the river She runs free and held by the bed.
By the Bed!
On this night…

I got the tattoo on 1-11-11 

this is how it happened for me...

outer side of arm was about a 1 for pain, as she went around the bend it increased.    1/2 an hour into it i was in some kind of spiritual high "letten go of all those years of pain." Then bam, inside arm,... body started shaking uncontrollably, pain level 8-9, thinking to myself "why does pain have to go with beauty and transformation, isn't getting this tattoo saying yes to more of that in my life!?" Breathing was very... difficult! Started looking at door for my mama. As soon as i saw Dani and she started singing me an ocean goddess song i weeped and could feel the warm rush of love flooding through my body again.
Wow! And i have to go back for more in two weeks. I'’m ready though, the butterfly goddess tattoo reveled my inner courageous lioness! Roar <

Martin Luther King in my Chicago child consciousness’

Took the opportunity today to look back at my babyhood, born in Chicago 1965 in an extreme racial divide.  In this clip below they compared Chicago to South Africa.  I am always curious how environment has shaped who i am today.  I remember hearing stories from my mom, how shocked she was to come home after our family had gone camping in Wisconsin, and on the news was the horror of what I assume was the 1968 racial riots.  My mom and dad had been taking my brother and I to rallies, me in the stroller. I’m sure it must have been somewhat of a relief to my mom that we had missed it all.  Now looking back though I wonder if any part of her felt she had missed an important moment?  Don’t think she was that radical though.  We eventually moved to the suburb of Evanston, just north of Chicago.  There was a racial divide in where people lived but in the schools the beginnings of interracial friendships and a kind of unspoken color blindness, meaning we new we lived in different worlds and neighborhoods and I new I probably had more privilege, but we just didn’t say anything about it. 
I have found an old journal entry from when I was maybe in 3ed grade at Martin Luther King Junior grade school.  Us white kids were actually bussed into the black neighborhood.  It was supposed to be a very liberal school with new kinds of learning ideas being practiced, such as beginning every day with writing in a journal, and we could fold over any entry we didn’t want the teacher to read.  I think this freedom is the origin of my love of writing; later squashed by being labeled with a learning disability and years of extreme attention to figure out what was wrong with me.  Good thing I went to an experimental school where they could experiment on me, not! 
My best friend was a cute black girl, Kim.  In the journal I describe how Kim was always pinching me on the arm till I bleed, my first tattoos and perhaps my first experience of enjoying pain inflicted on me. I wrote something like this, “I have to understand that Kim’s people have suffered a lot in the past when they were slaves, so she must still have a lot of hurt about that.  So I must take her hurting me”
Can’t imagine that I would have come up with that myself, maybe I had seen some of the racial riot footage on tv and my mom had probably done her best to explain why the blacks were so mad.  Looking at the footage it feels so familiar like I had been there, but that kind of image must seep into a child’s skin like butter.  There are so many ways that I still tell myself what that young self said, that I must be silent and endure others suffering and abuse towards me because I am white and privileged.  I am starting to wonder now though if this does greater harm not only to my spirit but to the one inflicting it upon me.  MLK was non violent in his actions but in his voice he was no passivist, and I don’t think that distinction was understood by my young mind.  It is an art I have not even come close to mastering, to be able to communicate with kindness and dignity for the other and myself, that their actions are hurting me.  “I can understand your pain and what your doing is not ok.”  How many times I chose to not say this to my Native American partner.  I thought I was helping her by “taking it” so willingly.
As far as I can see, this did nothing for her, she still suffers and in a moments notice those that she has loved can turn into her enemy.  
I am not an overtly political person at this time in my life, but there have been many ways that I have intimately tried to bridge the racial and class divides that exist between those that I love and myself.  There is a way that these issues are part of the deep well of who I am.  I hope to write more about it, to bring it up to the surface bucket by bucket full so I may have greater understanding and hopefully ability to love.  I expect there will be some sloshing along the way, meaning putting my foot in my mouth and perhaps offending rather than creating an opening.  Seems today is a good day to start taking more risks.

i have been enjoying shuffling my photos into different arrangemts to see the different stories that apear

I have just submitted these two to a juried show at a local gallery.  Right now it all feels very exciting, i'm sure if it doesn't get in it wont be as much fun any more.  I'll learn.

THE RIVER REVEALS: MR. RED 1 & 2

Sent with it a statement from Mr. Red:

“You can walk in that arroyo every day for months and only see dusty grey rocks, discarded plastic bottles, smell the stench of septic tanks buried too shallow, shards of broken glass; I became that, thought I was also worthless stench, I’ve learned how to hide in the shadow of the smallest rock became so still and quite I thought I was a stone, forgot I was even human.

Until, I started seeing this woman walking through the arroyo with eyes open as her heart, I couldn’t help but follow her... I saw her, dancen’ there with some friends; they had painted themselves red, red like me!  Why would they make themselves look like that?  And they were celebraten’, the color red, and laughen’, laughing so hard I saw tears splash from their eyes! 

She wasn’t afraid.  She caught sight of my shadow and wouldn’t let go, followed it like it was leading her to a treasure of gold.

And then it rains, and as each drop hits a rock more of that rocks brilliant color is revealed, each rock unlike any other.

She is my rain

Together we are a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.”

This is the one i used at an open call exhibit for artists working on themes to do with water and the Santa Fe River.  To see more about that event you can go HERE 

 

Couldn't Resist Any Longer ~ Let Her into My Bed!

She is such a good girl though, as soon as i get up from our nap time she jumps down and wants to be in her kennel. 

Simply Red

I finally lay down in the middle of the snowy river bed, just lay there and stopped

I finally lay down in the middle of the snowy river bed, just lay there and stopped worrying about Laska, stopped, worrying about not having my lover any more, stopped worrying about feeling alone…

And just felt the cold wet seep in and breathed deeply into my belly, opened my eyes and a plane was flying over me in the same direction as the river would flow and I thought, “that must be a good sign. I can let go. Breathe in grief… exhale letting go, breathe in grief, exhale letting go… I am at home with my grief, I am at home with being alone…” 

(I have decided to diagnose my self with ptsd trauma about letting go of the ones I love. It sends me spiraling when it seems it could be very simple like an exhale)

It lasted maybe eight minuets. I sat up to look for Laska, can’t completely let go of worrying about loosing her (too).

And immediately I was in love… there she was, not too far away, pulling a stick out of a bush and making it her own.

It felt like the first time she was there for me and the first time I have seen her interested in a stick, (see it is a good thing letting your baby be alone for awhile). Laska was saying, “come on mama come play, look what I found!”

I crouched and stalked over to her to let her know, “time to play”.

And we played.

It was not just a little stick, but something substantial, I felt proud of her, “she is like me; she finds treasures and wants to bring them home.” So I started to teach her about the bringing it home part because it was a treasure. I discovered it was a fairly good walking stick, kind-of like a sturdy witches broom, hmm curious, (that Ditch witch is making me a witches staff.)

I threw it for her in the direction of home and she would run after it excited, pick it up and do her chest and tail high proud trot, and then without any concern drop it and chase after another smell.

We got home and I started cooking my dinner and as it has been lately any time I’m cooking Laska sulks away to hide in fear from the kitchen sounds and I am there cooking again alone.

Loneliness seeps in, It was there at Thanksgiving with my family, It was there years ago when I was with my then “life partner” and It is here now. Loneliness should be the worst evil, it destroys anything and everything, I can’t seem to see when love is present because He is always hungry for More and never satisfied with the subtle gifts of what people (and pets) are capable of, with who they are and where they have been and the pain they have experienced and the fear they carry, my Lord, any piece of love in this world should be a treasure, right?!

And yet, the psychobabble shit tells me I should hold affirmation of some ideal love with no baggage…. This makes my chest heave with grief for our humanity… if I do that who will love the wounded ones… why do I love the wounded ones… father, mother… because we are all wounded and have come from that, we are all part of that, I am that, 

I cant let go… 

I carry this stick into this new year, this stick that looks a bit like a witches broom and my dog likes chewing on it.