If Mr. Ramstead Has Anything To Do With It Blair Witchiness Will Never Eat Mother Earth

I have the great pleasure of now roaming on tippy toe through the outback of my youth (something I’ve never let die and hence, these crampy calves). I am flipping through the imaginary pages of MtnMan’s portfolio. I understand he is Mark--Mark Ramstead as he has said in response to my many messages.

You are able to find Mark’s no-touristy folio on Red Bubble. It tantalizes us with all mandatory sites to see along any I-40, I-10, I-80 pre-meditation to go west and stay there.

If you are to follow him around, I would recommend that you go thru San Bernardino and for gawd’s sake, Barstow. Here’s the deal on all that: in San Bernardino there is a gas station in which the guys have nothing better to do than to demean women. Now, I don’t typically recommend such sight-seeing detours, but these guys are so extraordinarily swathed in male privilege that I must. This may be akin to the Orange Show in Houston or the, sob, sob, Watts Towers in LA. See them before it’s too late, you see, is the point of all that weeping and odd comparison.

And, Barstow, well, the only personal reason I have to go through there is so I may turn Mr. Thompson’s well-turned phrases over and over in my mind as I speed under the blistery sun in a rented convertible:

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive….” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. “What the hell are you yelling about?” he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn to drive.” I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971.

So there I was, surfing Red Bubble, and somehow through the String and Chaos Theories of art appreciation (may we add Parallel Universe ideology?)…somewhere in there was Mark. I believe his love for his Mom and Dad is and always has been, outstanding in the rain, cold, heat and snow (see evidence here) and, further, I suggest that he is a draftsman incognito. Additionally (as they say when they do go on), there is a Cezanne-Gone-Mad latent tendency (in this portfolio at least) that may drive you mad with its tantalizing twinkle in the eye. You don’t have to watch too closely for it.

Anyway.

Given all that, Mark Mountain Man Ramstead’s vision touches me this morning as I re-visit the obligatory natural resources up and down the coastal and other-side-of-the-Divide wonders of this Woody Guthrie song.

That these post-Adams monoliths can be so intimate is a thing. A really fine thing.

I self-console and reconcile these younger, more electronically-bound aficionados of nature who have viewed this work and find it strangely scary because Blair Witchiness has forever estranged them from the cold morning mists of an ambling trek through old forests.

There are people of the Rock Nation in there and Green Folk and devas all rising up to greet you, I say to them.

Prevent matricide and restore the vision of Gaia to magic on the right-hand path! I rail in my usual mania...

Hardly any homicide happens here beneath this canopy!

The only terror you’d better fear is just a black bear’s brand of howdy.

It ain’t no thang.

You can clank that away with a couple of nice metal drinking cups.
Huh? Oh, go to the flea market or swap meet.
They used to make them with clips for your pack or belt loop.

Haunted forests are cool, so cool.

You may find Mark Ramstead’s work on Red Bubble under the appropriate guise of MtnMan.

As you might have guessed, I like it.

Christenings, lil jj

set out on hoofin it then found the feets get weary so risk’d it

in the late nite traffic

downhill on a broken bike

swell.

see i went to the museum this a.m.

polite and such

then over to the articulation of what’s in here needin

my heart valves to vent

their lil syncopated rhythms of muscle, sinew,

synapse, electro-lights of my front mind…

so…

it’s been a iffy weekend and i gets my sweet ass kicked out

of love-eyes, sweet heart, soft breath, fierce heartland for free, for gawd’s sake

whatzzat??

nothing but a hot good dam, i’m saying, my tweak’d patience

just fly by

over that median and airborned you ain’t tellin me…

whatzzat? I’m sayin and someone’s wantin me to right this way,well…

i waz jes sayin, for gawd’s sake and the dude ask’d me

o lord…

i conjure up my best yes’m, buddha of compassionate christ o jesus my lil black ass all tangled

up in this some crazy ass man is scaring

patrons?? well… i’m breathing better and i gots my horn and i’s stanin

in the sunlite and i’m taking inventory:

counter rhythms are bred into me besides.

i am loosely arkestral

i am loosely furnished

i am everbody’s young friend…

We be’s de one’s wit de spirit emulated half assedly

one finger: i am loosely arkestral

two finger: i’s smiling

3: i loosely

4: bill collector calls when i finish The Glass Castle appalachian tome

i take it as a sign:

i knew i didn’t make money and no matter to matter bout that.

hell…

let charlie be da narrator or the secretary or worse:

let her hair dred up in the australian humidity so we are all purpose & amp;

we could call poetry nonsense or everythang

so’s we be really kicked out in the rain laughing.

that’s that mad thing they got goin. a jam more marmalade, sweet

darlin…

oh! call me shadow bear for the hibernation is upon us

and mushrooms sprout in corners

ah, in exile now…

rain pelt on sleepy face

steal food from garbage can and coats have no button

i finger this notblown horn: i knew my lips would go dead, well? it’s a passing paralysis…

our pilgrimage would work if we weren’t so passive but that is the point

it ain’t that serious or commonplace neither. so…

i am loosely arkestral/ancestral/furnished…

i am loosely what it is you shame out the doors of free vision, scat!

you lose the privilege of art! you mutt thang, you nut.

that author, more on fire than you comes ridin

greyhounds come from Michiganand we kickin back in some thrift store jordans

to say hell,we’ll just eat our pancakes cooked in nonsense,

we’ll just channel a duke and some damn fine duchesses,

we

sleep on the floor,we

be famous in the midnight with dingo yips and a coyote softshoe

yeah, i been to new orleans…

yeah, paris…uh huh

loosely unknown

the weekend is iffy,

spiffy african-hillbilly-displaced friendsand dredded up secretary of soul,

but i tested de longevity and i’m gonna have to marinate, moonchile.

ah, a vinyl hendrix thang.

ok.

water.

—a conjoint fabrication of his imminency Ariyah Joseph and yours cordially, Marie Monroe

intricately tied

--jimi jeff walker

driving in open windows the jeep is fast
and alive for the moment, barefoot
it was a mystic's time
pirate-ty and loose

a zebra faux fur rug, really huge

and on it a pink silk sofa with silver leafed hepplewhite frame. behind us a twombly piece of plywood nailed just inside an ornate 17th century frame to frame up a child scrawl of the perfect blue and moving on...2 schnabels over there. this place is huge and an ocean of some sort out past the eucalyptus where there's a hammock, diet coke and peppermint. a tiny chime lifts up this sleepy fog occasionally and i am visiting my life, just visiting

considerata

A SOCIAL WEBSITE FOR

THE ALCHEMISTCOME JOIN US.

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It's a Pleasure to Be Yours

thanks to all my wonderfully talented and tantalizingly eccentrik friends who inspire me continuously. i hope you'll go to Zazzle to see my new products that are inspired by these wonderful people. if you don't see your imprint here now...believe me, you will soon.

i hope you enjoy the Alchemical Protocol site there and will subscribe so updates come directly to you. Please fave the site and visit often! i am having a wonderful time designing there and appreciate everyone whose watching, commenting and shopping!

there are new product lines being developed. today I've added the Itinerant Shaman line for those of us who dabble from time to time in the ethers of this earth...also...

inspired by my Weird Uncle Tony who keeps society safe for all of us as he monitors the darker side of life (and reports to their p.o.'s!), i have developed several products and lines: Crawlspace (because he's creepy himself and a testimony to sublimation...this is the same reason we are all grateful that Stephen King writes! if he didn't, we wouldn't be safe!) and Cannibal Genetix, also inspired by Weird Uncle Tony's direct lineage back to the Donner Dinner Party!

also, please visit another new line destined to become a favorite of mine and all good women everywhere, Vaginal.

Thanks you for reading and watching and shopping and commenting!

much love to youse all.

Vaginal

Proclaiming the joys of womanhood!

My new product line, Vaginal, is available here.

Come back often for new items!

$piritual Ekonomik$

I promised a friend I'd write about this today because she's having one of those horrible days where nothing is working out financially. Things are a struggle, but beyond that, hope has threatened to dissipate.

I know those days because I've lived through them and I think that's the really important part: I lived through them.

I didn't think I would.

Somehow I thought that the lack of money would gobble me up.
I had invented a monster, my own personal boogie man, that came to get me when resources were low.

This boogie man jabbered at me constantly:
You're going to do without!
You'll have an emergency and won't be able to deal with it!
You'll starve!
They will take your house!

He went on and on, this boogie man, until I'd roll around in bed so anxious I couldn't sleep.

Everywhere I looked I saw fear, anxiety, scarcity and the brink of ruin.

I also saw self-pity.

This boogie man talked about OTHER PEOPLE in ways that hurt me.
This boogie man LOOKED at OTHER PEOPLE in ways that hurt me.

Their haircuts were nicer.
Their clothes were nicer.
Their this that and the other was NICER.

I didn't resent them.
I simply used this pseudo-information to feel worse.

I was all about feeling worse than, less than, different than.

I read some books about prosperity, wealth and abundance.

They filled me with some hope, but I can't say what actually changed besides my mind.

I had to change my mind in order to survive all that fear.

One of the things I changed was how I viewed wealth.
I couldn't do the look-at-your-friends-love wealth ploy.
I needed more.
So, I looked at assets.

What actually did I have that could be changed into money if I needed it?
And what could I get rid of in exchange for money?

This led me to clear out some clutter and a few good dollars dribbled in.

But this was not the real transformation that helped.
It was something internal that helped me as I began to look at things in terms of my accumulated wealth and possible cashable money assets.

They weren't large, but they were significant. I began to think of money as something that hadn't materialized yet, but could if I really, really needed it to. Like, that ring can bring me $100. That doll is 35.

Little things like that. That helped.

I sold a few things and sent the proceeds proudly onto debtors, but again, I think the value was in realizing I could pull money out of my usual surroundings if I wanted.

Another thing I did was label all scarcity thoughts and fear thoughts as what they are.

"There's a scarcity thought>There's a fear thought."

I began to separate myself from them. I had them and observed them, but in observing, I was distancing.

Then, I attacked the idea that scarcity and fear are even possibilities in my financial life. I asked myself whose ideas these were anyway.
The answers really weren't surprising. I'd know them forever, but I'd forgotten that they weren't necessarily REAL.

Scarcity and fear were my inheritance. They came from other people, other generations and other circumstances. They came from the Great Depression, from alcoholism, from clinical depression, and from lack of education. More...scarcity and fear came from abuse, anger, resentment, victimhood.

I looked deeply at myself. I tackled those things in me and decided very basically

"If I wake up tomorrow, I will live. It's as simple as that."

This trick worked for me in many ways.
It took me out of the future where the boogie man mostly lived.

It kept me in one day at the proverbial time.
That really helped!

In my one day I looked for gratitude.
I am convinced that gratitude thoughts cannot co-exist with other thoughts so I drove gratitude deep into as much 'thought time' as I could.

I said affirmations: I am safe.

I drove affirmations in whenever fear and scarcity started and gratitudes needed a rest.

I am safe.
I am capable.
I am protected by a divine presence.
I have enough.
I am a child of this universe.

on and on...

Instead of crying and shaking when I did bills I decided to be grateful.
I wrote things on my checks.
I put have a nice day stickers, Christmas stickers, Easter stickers...on the backs of my envelops. I told the faceless debtors "thanks!" on the check memo's.

I was appreciative. I appreciated being able to send the payment.
I changed my fear and scarcity in sending them to being grateful to send them. Somehow it helped.

I also talked to people.
I asked all my friends if I could have 20 from them if I really needed it.
I didn't take it, but I simply told them, hey, I'm in a crunch I might need to fundraise. Would you be good for a 20?
Everybody said yes, of course, just let them know, anytime.

That was quite a bit of unmaterialized money. It bolstered me. It was imaginary money in my imaginary bank, but hey! money lived in the ethers just waiting to materialize anyway!

The other side of this materialization effect was in me, too. Would I first believe, then secondly accept?

This had a great deal to do with self-worth.
Was I worthy enough to accept?

My 20 dollar exercise helped with this.

It also helped with my pride and my difficulty asking for help.

It goes on and on, my dear friend, but I guess I have to say that somehow, in the end I did practical things like negotiated lower credit rates, transferred credit card balances and the like...

but the chief poverty was inside me. I don't know if that helps you, but that's where I had to heal.

Marie Christmas Part V

I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas.
And to let you know that wherever you are, whatever you are doing,
I love you.

I hope you have magic.
I hope you have peace.

Marie

Marie Christmas Part III

In the event, they say...



I am not 911.

Call 911 in that event.



Oh, I may be 911.

You may call me in that event.



Oh, you may be 911.

I might call you in that event.



I am not 911.

I am 911.



In any event.

In the mornings when she'd wake up there was a stillness inside her so profound she was afraid.

In this stillness, she thought, there is my death.
This is precisely how it will come.

But these mornings were multiple and so little space between them that she could not continue with this type of fear.

She resolved to carry on despite it.

What if I die, she asked herself, what then?

And, so she carried on.

Then, coming to her thoughts as these nagging thoughts will come, she said to herself it is not what if i die, but what if i do not?

and having said it even in her mind she was now aware of what the fear was for.

it told her she is really afraid to live.

DOMESTIC CRUDE: SOUL MURDER 2009

Soul portraits of the victims of domestic violence.

A calendar to combat denial by Marie Monroe.

Red Bubble.

I Love PayPal

What could be better than to materialize $ out of the ethers?
That seems to be where several advisors have told me it lives anyway.
Now I see what they mean.
Somewhere in the ethers there is PayPal.
God bless PayPal.

No One Can Explain It

I've been asked to write an article about creativity in daily life. Well, actually I signed up for it. I thought it would be easy. It's not.

My mind is wandering everywhere. I am thinking about laundry. I am thinking about a slide show. I am thinking about disenfranchisement. These are no easy thoughts. They are terribly distracting.

I thought I'd say something about artists--people who putter about with words and images and objects. I thought I would reassure my readers that it doesn't matter if you're an artist or not, you still practice creativity everyday. I dismissed that thought. People usually have a hard time believing it. It is akin to telling someone in the anguishing throes of guilt that it is not his fault.

It's like throwing good money after bad.
It's a senseless and futile task.

It's about acceptance, I decided.
Either we accept our creative natures or we don't.
But how to 'convert' the unaccepting?
Hmmm...trickery sometimes works.

This topic is very difficult to pin down.
I'm thinking about writing. I'm posting on my blog.
I'm looking at my collaborative project and wondering what to post there next.
I'm trying to keep these photos stacked--face down to avoid the dust.
I'm trying to think how I got this way--on the extreme edge of daily creativity...out here where it's tortuous sometime.

I think I know where it began. In loneliness and boredom, in isolation and despair. Yes, I believe that's where I turned to paper and pencil, crayons and paint.

That is an extreme example, an example of needing to connect, to attach, to say something.

That is not what every man's every day creativity is about. Not really.
I don't believe the every day every man suffers that way.

The suffering artist is legendary.
Suffer for one's art? No, I believe it goes another way: suffering because of art.

Here it is, my justification for such a statement: making art is not easy. You get sleep deprived. You feel vulnerable. Your arms hurt. Your materials are too expensive. It doesn't sell well. It fills up your house to remind you it doesn't sell well. You take it personally. You feel like a failure. You try to take the sting out of it and relegate it to "hobby".

In the end, it doesn't matter. Something still wants to be painted, written or drawn. There is the problem of an artist's creativity. It is the problem of compulsion, involuntary behavior.

I don't think that's the every day every man experience.
I think more that a little dab will do you.
I think more that creativity will heal you.
I think you won't become tortured by the drive and vulnerability...that is, unless you need to.

Perhaps you, a nonartist as you say, need something? Perhaps you don't even know what it is. There's the trick. There's where paint and paper and pen and ink will trick you. You will find you needed things you didn't even know you needed.

Ah, what a treacherous business.

Why do it?

Do it to save yourself.
Do it to live.
Do it to hear yourself.
Do it to speak.
Do it to learn.
Do it to distraction.

Yes, distraction.
Take yourself away from there. Go somewhere else. Look around. Bring snapshots home. Do it while you're on the phone...doodle. Do it while you're watching t.v.

See what's going on in that parallel world that is so very distracting.

It opens you up.
It changes you.

No one can explain it.

Pre-dawn and Gulf Wars

--for my beautiful friends Lisa Hunt and Lauren Titus

I've been writing a bit lately and i see references to the ephemeral dotting that wordy landscape.

When I was pouring coffee just now I pondered this.

What kind of life am I leading where things are ephemeral?
I got a couple of viable answers.

One was that life is that way.
Another had to do with disenfranchisement.

Oh, I thought, that.

So, let's stay there for a minute in that italicized world where things go tilt and fly by like a stray newspaper in a nice gusty wind...

here's what my full coffee cup had to say this a.m...

you have residual PTSD.
you were a child in the 60's

I had not gotten this angle of it before. not really.
I had gotten plenty else to do with that. the 60s i mean...

I got this notion of how to dress that won't go away and has become at times a source of social pain

I got an inability to wear make-up even though i could certainly use it
as a charitable act for others and self

I got a nice sense of poetry from Bob Dylan, et al--that works

and I got access to a Jackson Brown kind of thing that really graced my young womanhood and I will always be grateful for that vivid cellular memory....i plan to use it in my exit plan, just to drift...

there's lots. lots of good things.
i am proud to have been a pioneer baby, teen, young woman...
social experiments are cool
they are also other things.
they also bring other things.

ask Dr. Leary.
hmmm.

well,
social experiments and social/cultural revolution brought me something else
and
that's a clinical thing, sadly

I realized this morning that I have PTSD that works like this:

I have the unshake-able idea that at the peak of joyous social change really bad and really sad things are going to happen.

I got the notion (suddenly not so ephemeral and italicized) that revolution costs enormous, sad, tragic, life-long, not so great life-altering costs.

I am a child of the 60's. Please forgive me.

Please forgive me, i wanted to say as my friends celebrated the president elect's success.

I am wounded. I am not so optimistic.

I am filled with conspiracy theories and visions of riots.

I could recognize that aerial shot of Detroit burning anywhere.

I memorized it.
I made myself.
I don't know why.
Maybe I was frozen like they say and had no choice but to look, but it didn't feel that way. I had to look. I knew that this was very important and I had to learn it. I remember thinking that, but I don't know when exactly except during the news.....

I can't remember the day, what else was going on in my life or even, right now, what grade I was in.

It should be easy to piece all that together.
I know the year, but

here's how trauma works:
it alters the brain.
it alters its ability to function properly.

i can't do the math,
but i see that aerial shot. i see it in great detail.

it's the same with other traumas of my life.
i can't, for example, tell you when my mother died.
i can guesstimate within a few years of accuracy.

i just can't do the math.

i could get the information on all these things easily.
i'm just not going to do it.

that's another way trauma works.

avoidance is not always a comfortable and easy thing.

we like to blame the avoiders. we like to think they are escaping this hard work the rest of us are doing when we confront and stick around.

that ain't necessarily so.

there's pain in avoidance.
there's even more pain when you realize it's pretty involuntary and compulsory.

avoidance can be harder than confrontation, responsibility, duty and accountability. It has been for me.

Duty comes easily in my life. Commitment to causes comes easily.
I'm sure that's a remnant, too.
Relationships? well, that's a different story.

A sexual/gender role revolution can be a mixed blessing for a child/pre-teen/teen/young adult/adult/middle-adult/aging adult...

That's another thing to take to the pier and let the slow, warm waters of the gulf wash away...
I am so wounded by the losses there.
That is another crippling sadness.
That is another remnant of my era.

i want to insert something about addicts here, but i'm tired to death of that.

i've been on a mission since the 60's to be an addict, recover from being an addict and to help other addicts.

i'm sick to death of it. This morning I don't care who wants to use dope. This morning I am sick to death of caring about other people.
This morning I am, yes, a compassion fatigue casualty, but more, this morning I realize that I am of a generation hell-bent on compassion fatigue crash and burn.
We flew into our own towers.

We didn't mean to, but there we were.

Here a lot of us still are.

Vietnam vets were not the only casualities of that era.
There are many adult children of the 60's still around.

A lot of us are scared right now.

You'll have to forgive us.

We got called in from recess because the Russians were coming to drop mushroom clouds on our school.

The president had been shot.

There was a silence I had never heard before.
I can't do the math, but I remember a silent tunnel that I was running through.

I was little enough to be on the slide.
I was big enough to be on the big slide.

I remember running as fast as I could when the teacher's face looked like that.

I knew it was something more terrible than anything ever.

Somehow, it made me afraid for my daddy.

I thought he might be dead.

When bad things happened he went there with shotguns.

He might not come home from work every day anyway, but on this day...

When the really bad guys were loose he really might not come home today ever... surer than everyday when he might not.

This day for sure.
This day for sure.
This day for sure.

This is the way the math dies.
This is the way trauma works.

You will have to forgive me.
I was a child in the 60's.
It hurt me.
I almost got lost.
I didn't come back till the 80's.
Not really.
I guess I did get lost.

I was trying to do good things.

I remember feeling good for awhile.

I remember doing some things right.

I am wounded.

I am still afraid.

There are many of us around.

We whisper about it.
We don't want to hurt you with it.

Slowly, we know we can't.
We can't hurt you.

We love you.
We need you.

You are our beautiful children that we were so afraid we couldn't have.
We were afraid we'd hurt you because we were lost.

I am so glad you are here.

I'm sick to death of it.
I'm wounded.
I'm tired.

Everybody works until they can't work anymore, but
you know what?

Retirement is cool.
I usually mess it up. I say "When I graduate...."

I'm still in school.
Jesus.

I'm still memorizing stuff.
I'm still staring at it.

I'm sick to death of it
and

I am so proud of you.

I bless you.

I take you as my own.

You, go, girl, as you're fond of saying.

I'm taking a break.

All of this is in your really excellent hands.

I'm proud of you.
I'm so very, very proud of you.

You are the children we wanted.

Image by Mark Welsh

Mark Welsh: Loving the 'Unlovable'--the Sweet Impermanence of Physicality

Scouting the nether regions of aesthetics, Mark Welsh is a collector. He retrieves, and lovingly preserves, a collection of never-seen specimens for us to inspect. Some are disturbing, but only at first. Some are whimsical, but somehow deeper than that. All are rare.

One wonders where he has gone to find his ephemeral creatures…how he made their acquaintance and why he came to love them. Skimming his collection and his writings, we find clues:

there is usually a rigid pattern performed without a conscious design in response to certain stimuli —Mark Welsh

This helps me. I begin to understand the xenophobic response that tried to pull me away as I first moved in closer to his work. I begin to understand why, once intimate with these images, I have now broken something inside me, something that has needed to be broken, something judgmental and full of limitation.

Welsh’s work captures the spirit long enough to tutor it and to help it remember basics.

In this world all things are equal.

We would do well to be compassionate and to have an unconditional and loving regard.

Physicality is transient and haphazard.

Something greater is at work.

Welsh not only tempts our vision, pulling us, compelling us, but he tests his viewers, challenging the limitations of our acceptance, of our aesthetic. He engages us in an examination of conscience as we absorb his work.

Often oddly pulled, cropped, distorted and malformed, faces appear to confront us, but they are not aggressive. In fact, there is a stillness about them that reassures us that we may look as directly as we want without reprisal. The admonishment to look away from the malformed falls away. It is polite to look, even to stare, in Welsh’s world. In fact, his characters expect inspection and wait serenely for it. They are not self-conscious. They wait patiently for me to resolve my own discomfort.

Somehow, these characters understand the viewer’s limitations and give us time to work them out. In the end we are equals with xenophobia dissipated. These images teach us that we are similar. They take us to the physics of spirit and help us abandon the physical. This, I think, is Welsh’s greatest gift to his viewers. I begin to wonder about the artist himself and look about for what might be a self-portrait and I think I find one in Aka

Aka, the artist’s chosen RedBubble icon, brings another batch of odd thoughts and feelings. This character is young and I feel protective of him, tender toward his youth. Measurements appear, in the background, some geometric calculations…an intelligence lives in these worlds. Kafka himself lives there. These images are teaching me very pertinent lessons: human beauty is not always symmetrical; commonalities win out over differences…I expect the artist to be a bodhisattva of sorts. I imagine him walking lightly, but with stealth, watching for what must be resolved.

He sends us postcards from his walk: a series of specimens that tell us more about this spiritual journey. He inspects earth’s fundamental elements. He captures insects, reptiles, foul and sea creatures then writes to tell us:

in the north, ever i walk searching.
i am all consuming passion and life.
fire in the belly, fire in the mind.
i bring colour to desert earth
and evolve in all things.
i am fear and burn in all that dream.
you will know me by my touch
and the mark i leave on your soul.
i am the fullness of summer’s joy
and the protecting love of the father.

There’s more, much more… the Purge series invites us into the passion, but also reminds us that the refrigerators, toasters and tables of the world are debris and we must look somewhere else for the essence of this walk that has, I suspect, traveled far since these works were created.

Please watch for him. There will be much, much more to come.

Mark Welsh lives and works in Fremantle, Western Australia.

He displays his work on Red Bubble as Elsh.

For more about his work, please visit his site.

Interview

CHONCHY interviewed me about art, art therapy, personal hygiene and such.
Thanks to Rae.

The Birth of Another Me!

My readers and watchers know I am prone to sprout me's all over the place!
As they say of the reproductively productive: I am quite fertile...ahem...but all that aside, I am pleased and proud (again, as they say) to report yet another psychic birth:

Psyche Delia has been born!

Delivered without complication, quietly in the Kentucky night, this beautiful bouncing girl slid into the world, effortlessly, on lightbeams and color wheels.

She is so gorgeous, such a visual feast, that it is almost as if her heart and soul and psyche have been vectored by the great vector guru himself!

Who is that!?, you may ask...I shall, of course, tell you!

It is the man who knows when color, or even the possibility of color, arrives on earth....

Psyche Delia was discovered by the candied eye of Matt Mawson who keeps watch from down under while the rest of me sleeps.

Matt Mawson is the Vector Guru Exemplar--see proof here! in his recent book, Vectored, a sweet passport to vector-vision where all the world's inhabitants are related.

His images are joy-filled and intense, full of chuckles, smiles and giggles. He knows a colored psyche when he sees one...

The Red Bubble community loves Matt. You will, too.

Here's to you, Our Bubbly Vectored King!

I take my new moniker and use it proudly.

I am Psyche Delia!

------
Matt Mawson lives in Tallebudgera in Australia and is fond of people, rust, cars, trucks and color.

Ben Galley: Finding God & London's Vandals

Marie Monroe
USA
10.10.08

Ben Galley’s London dwarfs its people as they walk down city steps, look for sky overhead and smudge along the city’s walls. There are really more interesting things here than who these people might be. What is more important is the city’s breath--its breeze or mist or wind, even the absence of these. People are integral but not. Clearly they are welcomed here, but it is nice without the chatter of personality. It is better with hints and traces of where personalities have been.

Only a few of his human subjects claim individual power in this London, but at the hub of this city’s beautiful, deep breath stands Galley’s unknown man--The Traveller. He alone is empowered enough to stand still, strong and in solid form. Whoever that man claims to be, I see him as Galley himself. This is his iconic self-portrait… the man who watches London with the lonely vision of an urban and practical mystic.

With a handful of prints to thumb through, Galley’s vision sneaks up to say, I am an important staple in this city…my eyes are an axis around which London’s ephemeral, somehow confrontive streets are spinning out their days.

He apparently loves this city in which its characters can be the faceless near-shapes of unspecified persons. A painless loneliness is everywhere in these works, but there is also delight and not an unhappy eye. The cityscapes are beautiful, singular, soon to evaporate in a mist that’s felt without being seen. The eye feels the cool mist of Galley’s vision. The trees, when we visit, puff their cool moisture to us, but the city is simply soft, muffled, breathing deeply and still.

There are markings about--pedestrian debris. People seem contently estranged from one another so we come to believe that our artist is as well—politely, unobtrusively looking. ..Galley seems to resonate with the city’s folk, but he leaves them to their own business. I like that. I like that very much.

Galley’s vision is not mature and that is exciting because it is already accomplished. It will break through again and again before he’s through. He is not only his Traveller, but is also, I think, the boy in Finding God--alone in the city, at home, but solitary, still close to an adolescent vitality, still stricken by the scrawl of vandals or the postings of renegade artists. He is traveling through London like our iconic traveler and I want to stalk, a few steps behind, watching him watch the city, watching his own Grimm’s tale of live and breathing things still warm on his heels from childhood. He seems to remember his childhood means of discovery and he looks (most times) straight into the image. That is charming. It is also effective.

I cannot wait for him to watch more, but his breathy trees can wait. They know he’ll come back from the sidewalks and buildings, the streets and vandals. He’ll be back, done that day, hands in pockets and walking home.

Ben Galley is a photographer living and working in London.
See his work on Red Bubble where he exhibits as Redtempa.

Thank YOU

Thank you to all my friends who have supported my new ventures, particularly on

Red Bubble.

The inspiration was greatly needed, the financial boost certainly appreciated and the hugs and kisses sweet and swell.

RED BUBBLE

TANGIBLE IS NOW ON RED BUBBLE
SEE SLIDES
SEE YOUR MOM
SEE YOUR EX

Today is a Good Day

today is a good day. i woke up with discernment.
i knew where my strengths were. i knew who my friends were and i let them know.

there are too many places for us to hide.

this morning, everyone was found
except the half-ones (uglier than the invisibles, human but not quite)

this morning, i didn't give a damn about them.
i didn't forgive them or rationalize them.
i let them go back to their shadows and half-smiles,
back to the crevices of heart.

the half-ones
they live in shame: one foot in and one foot out.
a hokey-pokey of authenticity,
the way they regret their space
the way they regret their breath
the way they spread regret
the way they hide.

all abused children are not lovable adults.
some are sadistic
some are narcissistic
some will kill you out of love.

it is a trick to live among them.

today is a good day.
i woke up with discernment.
i woke up knowing who i love
i let them know.

CLICK ON ALL MATH

What feels, in the nightmare or the waking dread, capable of eroding, drowning, engulfing you in the eternal nightsea...your terror is simply an alert that something momentous has you in its sights. Don't be afraid to die: the brain helps us at that doorway. The soul itself is activated just in time to enfold you safely into death's full impact. It is a serenity you can never imagine until it taps you on the shoulder. People have experienced it. If this is your ultimate terror then see what they can teach you. Can the tadpole image its future form? STALK OBLIVION.

Pace

Don't be fooled by someone keeping pace.
Look for someone that will improve your game.

paradise

blessings

please click on all math

are you incinerating i'm not taking good care of things?

what kind of lazy bastard would rip up the tao?

yeah well i cldn't help myself

how you gonna say?

it's an inebriation

ain't no body gonna take me no where. i got powers in here.

arm yourself if you must
fortify something internally.
then go to the shadows of
lost souls looking for the one who
might want to surface even just
for a moment. this is the mission
of angels & though you may be an
assassin you will never be called
to kill (sic)

evil is no match cause you the angel girl.

she don't care. she the lead angel.

sitka cries everyday the jeeps come

i don't care i still love him

he'll be mine forever

notebooks of outrage
longitudinal studies
psychosis ain't no thang
i talk to angels
you a angel, girl
you a lead angel

A rabbit for quick wit;
a tibetan bead for protection
a chunk of turquoise for earthing
a water bottle cap for purity
a weapon for kicks
unknown red fetish for unfettered menses
dressed to kill
c. 1982

If He's Sick Let's Help Him, but Let's Get Him Off His Throne First! Viva La Raza!

They Found Me

they did.
they found me.
and ever since they found me i've been making video collages to the tune of Tangled Up in Blue.

high school reunions.
harumph.

i liked that girl.

she was smart.
she looked nice in drag.

she wore redwings before redwings were cool.
she climbed straight up the cliff
instead of doing the switchbacks.

she was a ridge-runner.
she wore a mccarthy button.

she would not eat lettuce or grapes
and spoke fluent spanish.

she dreamed of a Tavo or Jesus.
she dreamed of guatemala.

she sat in a cloud in zacatecas
and met don juan at the border.

she hocked her $10 handmade classical guitar
for food money in texas.

her daddy had 2 social security numbers.
she thought nothing of his portrait beside a bullet-riddled ford.

her mama was gorgeous.

she was a pirate looking for a band.

male privilege

in the heat he'd whine about the heat
in the cold he'd whine about it
in the night he'd whine he was too tired
in the day he'd whine some more
in the afternoon she'd be home soon
in the morning she wasn't gone yet
at lunch she might call or worse
at dinner he'd have to cook it
when she cracked i guess he settled in
when she cashed her check, for sure
when she calls he rattles on to her
and sleeps late till she calls some more

from the divine posey

in the winter she went scrambling around--no one blamed her
and no one really cared.
she hated homosexual men and had no way to explain it
till one day she happened upon the picture that she threw away.
it is always easier to compartmentalize.
that is why we used to have trains.

pig boys

pig boys are usually shorter than the girls they date

they smile, just happy to be along

they won't go away even if you insult them

they keep coming back for more

his lessons were really not known

so he'd wander all around looking at the rest of us
first me then me again
it was exceptionally raw
but i took the bait as it's commonly known
and went looking after myself myself

egged & farther curiosity

in lunching she sat almost in a chair
hovered they'd say about us
with delicate munchies and less sound
she'd wait till someone in a distinct
way would grab her
this is how she lived until she couldn't
this is how she'd know what was

incinerati

elevate my soothings
corroborate my bearings
scintillate my fallen star
validate my parking

please visit poetix

http://marie-poetix.blogspot.com/

when demons present themselves

it's not always easy to see what lies beneath the social facade.

where would you go if you were rodrigo?

Home again.

gigbag

Spiritual sight glues us to the world.

Greetings

A long overdue hello!
Many transitions have occurred--all of them excellent and with promise of more to come.
I haven't been able to be here since February, but things have settled down.

News? There's lots, but first and most recently....

I have been working with Jimmy Anasazi as he composes some fantastic music coming out soon on Warner Brothers.
I am so pleased for him and really honored that he has asked for my help with lyrics.
After all those years in studios and venues, he deserves his gear in one locale. He deserves those checks in the mail, too.
Congratulations, Jimmy!

I am somewhat sleep deprived due to the intense energy of all that creativity, but it appears that now, after about 30 days of daily work, that people are able to nap and sleep a full night. I hear exhausted little zzzzzzzzzz in Louisville, Santa Fe and LA. What a wonderful world when the band members and one's collaborators can live thousands of miles apart.

Who invented the bubble mailer? or the fax? we honor them as well.

Also, I am pleased to announce that an academic project will soon ship off for publication. The title is in negotiation, but here I am, exposed--yes, i do have a bundle of synapses that fire coherently. I'll keep you informed...

Then, there is a project that is rippling ashore in sweet little fits and starts: a children's book about a magical magpie that lives high in the New Mexico mountains.....I have found the illustrator and we have begun our relationship.

New Mexico is at every turn. The dream is churning out its wave.

Much love to you.

When things have more solid forms I will certainly let you know.

i yam

i yam pleesed und plowed

i stood in a parking lot at thornton's in the freezing cold and sold fotos.

i was the only white girl there, but
i was the man with a cell phone.

it was less discreet than a drug deal.

i am pleezed & prowd

mr. harper kommishund a cd cover.

i am pleased & proud

my fotos will fly out to denver.

Greatist Things

the greatist things okur when i sorender.

coyote piks me up & shakes me.

tumps the world on its head

pores appels on me, spitz & grinns.

the werld is knew.

i new it!

evidence of answered prayer

prayer stix flap in the wind
parasites fly off, human and non.

love, its season, dormant was never so

latent love rises like kundalini.

gratitude, gratitude.

the cactus guardian

spirit of psilocybin

welcome to the world, kate

Let this be a warning to ya

the abuse quilts, M(2)RiE Monroe, Louisville, KY

M(2)RiE = marie monroe, louisville, ky

DADGAD tuning for everyone! The key of D is the centre of the universe. Go there with me!

Explore Chaos/String and know that Fractals R Us.

shoes of phil doutaz--original photo jenni, manipulated by m2rie

jeffrey scott holland's new adventures

please visit jsh's new adventure and stay posted at catclawtheatre.com

my pagan baby, photo courtesy of jenni

touching things happen in my living room

zafusy

Cancellation pore, in the latter I’d reluctantly
crave one or liberally sated credentials
hide his lasting lust

in some relished page beneath a pressure in one
option
so fine I might sleep away the drudge

oh, her same and he

then

the time for quilts has come she said

the time for quilts has come she said and laid them heavy down

the time for quilts has come she said and laid them down

the time for quilts has come she said and laid them

the time for quilts has come she said and laid

the time for quilts has come she said and

she said has quilts for time

said has quilts for she

said has time.

family album quilt

wedding album quilt

wish i may wish i might quilt

our happy home quilt

meemo's quantum quilt

Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones Was One of Those

Whoever thought children were innocent? or protected? or unsuspecting?
I hang out with the adults who were not that.
I hang out with adults who still aren't those children, but are still children of the other sort.

Were I more honest, I don't really hang out at all.
I am always quietly, covertly visiting despite my displays.

I am always the best friend who didn't know it,
the girlfriend who never realized,
the future wife who never guessed us.

My intimacy is reserved.
My behaviors are not.

In fact, I am one of those despite the title of this entry. There is no past tense at this level.
Forget the was. Remember the is.

It is the I Am in which we reveal.
It is the magical call of true revelation:
Reveal yourself in the I Am.
No creature of this or the other can refuse.

Thank someone for laws.
Thank someone for order.

Some children have no immediate peers.
Oh, there are children of the ilk, but they get scattered about.
Percentages and that.
Percentiles. Problems. Personalities. Parents.
Dr. Leary's accuracy: it migrates to seashores unwittingly.

It is the conscious that will stay or landlock.
It is more certainly that when we have no ocean we are lost.

It is remarkable really that we can find the others at all, but there we are:

One here, one there, one over there pretending not to be here.

The courtesies are precarious. Getting acquainted, of course, is tricky.

I've been lucky though.
I've found them.
Not many mind you, well, more than I've navigated,
more than I either had the energy or the wits to draw in.

The interesting thing in my life is that they scatter.

Almost as skittishly as they appear, they disapparate to odd corners of the world.

Some to the rooms where few visitors will come or are even welcomed,
some to Alaska or London, Seattle or Tucson.

Some to Sydney. Some to Greece and Singapore, Boston or Vermont.

One to fly by dead reckoning into the sun.
One to lay down beside a note.
One to dangle from a beam.
One to race into the Gulf.
One to fall down mountains.
One to leave without leaving.
One to fade into a chair and stay there.

Some across town doing who knows what. They aren't saying. I don't either.

I wrote a poem about my dad once.
Not an unusual thing...more habitual really.

This one though, this particular poem, began at 19 and ended some 20 years later.
I think.
Perhaps it hasn't stopped. I can't be sure.

But it required editing, obsessive editing--something that definitely was not my habit.

It began over and over the same way:
Belgium, France and Ray Milland.

Sometimes it went to:
Rome, Wisconsin, Quantico.

Then on to:
Dallas, Kansas and Artie Shaw.

It never occurred to me that we were skittish on purpose.
That he was one of these.

That I was one of those.

So, what brings us here today is the scattering,
what brings us here today
is Dr. Seuss
and the mattering.

Covert actions carry their own ignition.

It is the combustible of skittery things.

The pushpins on maps.

The percentiles.
The companions.

What brings us here are the matterings.

A mentor told me I should circle the globe.
Go longitude, go latitude
and gather your family along the grids.

I thought what an impossible task.

I thought how that magic would tighten this world.
Would make it fit.
Would make it mine.

So, what brings us here today are the scatterings.
What brings us here today are the matterings, the covert actions, the us.

Skittery.
Graceless.
Alone in the bush, dead, reckoning.

Ego fights her way to survival.

Her immersion in this solvent is misattributed.

This is not mortality I might say.

You've confused the sensation with flesh,
you've confused the sensation with tissue and sinew.

Call me and we'll see.

Before the storm

vehicles carry more than passengers.

this one has carried me through more than any of my friends.

in my life friends orbit at safe distances.

one of us is usually scared.

A Really Good Man

A really good man looks out the window and decides he has to do something with your jeep before the weather hits. He looks at the tread on the tires. He does the fluids and checks the brakes and such.

A really good man gets teary when you cry in gratitude.

Sue me. I don't give a polycarp.

suet pudding - a sweet or savory pudding made with suet and steamed or boiled puddink - any of various soft sweet desserts thickened usually with flour and baked or boiled or steamed spotted dick - a suet pudding containing currants doe, a dear, a female dear.

heinous crimes of the literati

i think it horribly foolish to limit one's speak to that of languages humanly spoken.

someone should do more about this.

i am sick of having to explain the dada of it all.

i invoke the spirits to bring me my circle of dadaists incarnate now!

so mote it bee. so bee. so it.

suet.

http://mariechristmas.blogspot.com/

Just Out of Your Curiosity

i caught some treasured process in your quick smile.

i saw the warmth run over us.

i saw the possible future tilt my game.

artists live the continuum

i can't tell you exactly when it started, these night raids all over the map:

sleeping with a pen just to catch the tooth fairy or a slip of amygdala down the pipe.
it just started sometime around the bicentennial i think.

it was a damn hot summer.

i fell out of love and into boredom.

i was very, very young to be so disappointed.

this world had left me & i took to sentences strung out like junkies in the bitter cold.

i can't say when i would have left us.

many more times than i imagine,

but i know the sinking pillow

i know her sweet arms

i know her reprieve.

From Love to Psychopathy

I have a friend named Leroy--a nice man, a suffering man.
He has a winning smile as they say. He's earnest. He's funny.
He carries an enormous weight not on the shoulders but in the soul.

Leroy can be a hero and then shrink back to a little boy.

We would have been great friends at 12, 16, 25, but now Leroy lives on the other side.

I have a friend named Leroy--a nice man, a suffering man.

9.5

is it odd really that a child of an archetypically absent/authoritative legend should watch this movie and yearn for its intense attachment?

is it so odd that i would, at this juncture, finally know it well enough to say it?

attachment is a continuum of comfort.

complete surrender is another thing.

in surrender there is genesis, this world is released and my core is exposed.

not the surrender of inferior force.

not the surrender of fear,

but the surrender of complete intimacy, trust and yearning.

there at that delicate spot.

there at that precarious balance...

not at magic's edge, but in the mystic's ecstasy from where nothing ever returns,

from where i am gone.

i don't vote

it's not a rule, it's just something i don't do.

at least since my youth and maybe during a momentary lapse of sanity.

when i figured out that my candidates are always losers that's when i stopped.

i'm not sure what this says about me, them or the whole process and gods be goshen, i ain't recommending the rest of you do this so leave me alone about it.

it's just that civic duties mean something else to me.

they are, in my mind, akin to civil...civil duties and given my most recent chat with his highness of my mind which culminated in this description:

"you are about as submissive as a rabid triceratops in a china shop"

i must admit, i have my uncivil times.

that is why, i suppose, it is important to practice.

this morning i apologized to the woman next to me at cap's serve yourself coffee machine.

my half n half got a little wild.

she said something rather urban and comforting and all about me that made my morning.

i think she said o you're good, girl, you're okay.

that was civil.
that was great.

but about voting...i really vote all the time.

i'll say i vote this.....or i vote that....

it's how i participate in teams or groups or gatherings.

i really don't like indecision so instead of being out n out bossy i just jump in and cast a vote:

i vote we get soda.

i vote we turn him in to the p.o.

i vote we sleep.

it goes rather well that way. i just don't vote for politicians.

it seems like i would be saying i choose them.

and, indeed, i don't.

i choose my girlfriend at cap's serve yourself coffee machine.

i vote she gets something really civil coming her way soon.

i also vote for the civil liberty of being rabid--just among friends, among intimates.

on the other hand, when i watched 9.5 weeks again the other night I yearned for submission.

it's something i do. it's not a rule. it's just something i do.

Rage.

Not just anger, but rage.

In people it comes from many places: a primary attachment that is somehow broken, betrayed, lost, severed…

An invasion of integrity: physical, psychic, psychological…

A devastating loss…

Rage is stronger than any of its cousins.

Rage is 0-120 in seconds flat.

Rage is a force of nature:
fire, flood, tornado, deluge, volcano, lightning…

Rage is power to the powerless.

Rage is stamina to those in pain.

Rage is pain.

Proclamations and Estimations

i wonder about the Dalai Lama. More specifically, what would it be like to be his brother or his mom?

what would it be like to have him over for lunch? for birthdays? for the new year?

what would it be like to have him for an uncle? what kinds of toys would he bring to your 7th birthday party?

when we are little we need the grown-ups.

when we are little and grown-up we need them still.

what would it be like?

birds & angel stuffing

i heard the birds this morning.
while they are always talking to me, i've forgotten to listen for a long time.
i used to talk to the crows every morning.
they fortified me, like my shaman--
he calls me up and says, where are you, g-damnit! when i call you answer the phone, bitch!
he slips and slides in the mud of his magic: oops, i'm a crow; splat! i'm a coyote; g-damnit, now i'm a badger!
but that's all a sorcerer's stand up routine. it is a sorcerer's love. he is my sorcerer brother.

now, that's a fierce goddamn cross to bear.

so these crows taunt me.

they laugh at me mostly:

you have a stupid routine, they say

you drive that big machine to get places

you have to go to work and we don't

we sit up high and you crawl

we fly and you can't even swim

like virgil shapeshifting for the hell of it, it's friendly fire. no wounds. sibling play between the species.
i enjoy it. i need it.

once you know the nature of things...

so, this morning i heard the winged again.

that is a good sign. that means i am returning to my own nature.

the blog industrialists say never talk about your friends on your blog.
they say never talk about your family.

that way, they say, you might be successful and people will want to read your blog.

like most rules these are garbage.

i am not a break-the-rules-for-the-sake kind of person.

i am rather a rule examiner, an inspector general of sorts, but most importantly, a creator of rules. an inventor if you will.

some rules rule and i like to endorse them when i come across them...
like in texas. men know they are to race to the door of the circle k to hold it open for me.
that is an exquisite rule. a holdover from how precious i was in the genetic code of early settlin' days. me, my shape, my fabrics, my ovum...all pretty darn precious. like water in el paso and a/c in san antone

or those rules in maine where everyone welcomes you cause you've from away from here and wants to know what away from here is like and always celebrates your away from here with some nicety they've collected about it. up there, away from here, someone will pump your gas and clean the windshield so your travels are nice...all of those rules rule.

that canada has no poisonous snakes is another rule i'd like to endorse.
that canadian hikers come up on you saying, "i'm a 2-legged and friendly at that!"
fabulous rules!

i always wanted to run away to canada and have babies with a fugitive boyfriend.
i knew the rules would be great although when those fantasies started i believe i was more interested in having a cabin that operated with my rules and not my mom's.
the rules of fugitive life were appealing. i wasn't sure what they were, but i was willing to wing it.

back to the birds. they talked to me this morning. they say, remember walking on yellow leaves yesterday?
remember crawling under ancient grapevine although you're weak and had to struggle?
remember how surefooted you've always been?
remember the zone of running through woods when you were small?
remember the zone of sliding down ridges like sliding into home?
remember just climbing the cliff instead of doing the switchback?
remember, remember?

it's all for the friggin birds. bless em.

then there are rules that don't apply to anyone's life but mine.
these i am proud of. these are my fugitive babies.

there are angels, angel boys, guardian angels, and boys full of angel stuffing.
this is not a complete list, of course. nor have all the rules applicable to these been yet invented.
in fact, these boys are men, marvelous, yummy, startling men in various interactional forms as well as integral forms.

we have morphed each other and continue to invent.
i am speaking of friends. i am speaking of family.
industrialists, take your schizoid architecture and cram it.
and answer the goddamn phone when i call, bitch.

this is all to say what about those birds?

car doors

there are intimacies that can't be spoken:
touches.
images tacked over a desk.
a stray monopoly piece, a red hotel.

hand holds from a vehicle like a drive-in fast food love.

a tiny teenage valentine: molded plastic caught in a forgotten web of my life's string.

they come at you through the sacred heart or the solar plexus...wherever you need them.

each satisfies like the last one, but it is a hungry feast.

where hope comes from is far away.
where hope comes from is here.

some hope comes with vision, some with viscera, some with bounce.

the absolute best is not from courage.
courage lives in terror.
courage is only possibility.

this is the zone.
most brave soldiers are not warriors who walk this earth.
there is a walk that shows it.
muscle, bone, levitation.

this is the zone.
this is the warrior.

chat boxes spring up.
human languages form intelligibly as they speak.
they've never been spoken before.

typing is a wondrous affair.

for example, there is always fowl.
for example, circumambulation is love spinning out its lines of power,
the grids of this earth tightening.
we are safe from collapse.
we are calibrated.
we have points and between them...

there are geese.
always, for me, there are geese
flanking the wounded, waiting, waiting.

escorts.

smoke cigars in imagination.
hell, light one.

car doors will save you.
regressive speech and its sentiment will sustain.

some will fly again.

all of them.

all of them are precious.

these are the tender things.

how can you speak them?

you just dare.

Say it

The factors of a life
It’s soul, it’s meal
What’s that song I heard
When we were 20?

Yes, I remember.

It was on
Highway 1.

It stopped my life
It carved me out
It flew me
I never came back.

That twist in the road
Where rocks were slick
That break against my face
How was I to know

I was 20.

I never came back.

Friendly Fire

I have a friend in Kentucky named Buddha so I get to say things like how is Buddha doing? I talked to Buddha yesterday and look what Buddha gave me. I am a lucky girl.

I also have a friend that shapeshifts into a black snake and chases away the germs that bug me.

Like I said I am a lucky girl.

I have another friend, a cheerleader sort, that would balk at such descriptors. He sends animated smiley faces to punctuate his snark. He seems to believe in me. For some reason he's talked me around the crevice several times. High-wire acts and all.

I have friends on fire.

I have friends who can walk on fire.

I have friends who feed my fire when the light is flickering.

I promised to solicit prayers for Jimmy Anasazi. His fire blazes a Woody Guthrie tune in its dominion.

Add prayers for my hillbillies, for buddha, for cheerleaders and snark.

Add us up this phoenix, add us up.

recovery mode

the crises have passed and there is a new breeze blowing in from the coast.

i look forward to getting back to work and these many projects.

thanks to all who sent prayer and a very special thanks to my shaman.

new Project: True Home (c. Marie, 2007)\न्यू प्रोजेक्ट: त्रुए होम (क। मरी, २००७)

Early origins:

http://www.megaera.org/Megaera/summer05/metcalf.html

i continue to look for true home.
the project is going well.

it looks fabulous on a black background.
already there are 10 complete pages each
with photos and text.

तो लुक फ़ॉर त्रुए होम. थे प्रोजेक्ट इस गोइंग वेल्ल.
ईत लूकस फबुलौस ओं अ ब्लैक बच्क्ग्रौंद.

अल्रेअद्य थे बुक हस ग्रोवं तो १० कोम्प्लेते पगेस
विथ फोतोस ऎंड टेक्स्ट ओं एअच.
थे कवर इस दोने अस वेल्ल

विस्सेरल देलिघ्ट्स

प्लेस विसित थिस लोवेल्य वूमन'एस सीते।

हेर आर्ट इस फंतास्तिक.

http://www.jenniferdanderson.com/

i continue to love this man even though he
rotates off the front pages of me bloggy

www.jeffreyscottholland.com/

www.jshnyc.com/

certainly we came captive

the outset longshoremen slept totally clothed.

their wool caps hide my fear.

wherever we were going slid toward

Pontchartrain.

protocol

would in the daybreak rouse us
my sky to scintillate her

fever, some stars,
the oasis in my ear.

what a good fight
to deliver,
how much to divulge.

dark goes by
in his ways of neon.

blocked, no services need apply.

one kernal dripped to silliness, but
more in violation so's

everyday magic is soon redundant.

in a fierce departure,
my cholenergic science & rescue
came out of the sea,
came out of the town.

what else like it i'd soon
pass by option, skirt an intimation
you'd toss at me.

no where is this liveness risen.
no where is a drape or divan.

all along the marina
what went south would wash us,

what hid our pride condemn.

a curvature of milk

say you would and then some more
would flinch toward my own nirvana

how could we manage that?

easily, we can't.

no reasonable conclusion
rests at whichever juncture
it sews.

always the calculation.
always the brunt.

i am satisfied deep in this revelation.

until face winds her several arms
around it, humiliation crawled up

to last it.

a strong tutelage pour me, have me,
sound, tick, progress.

one of us is withery.
one of us a fool.

i'd push toward salvation if
i were you & then we'd have milk
to polish it.

all over the long road you
came rushing.

at the curve no one could
have witnessed my storm.

butterfly things

the soul of an artist is an exquisite thing.
naked. earnest.

all around the unveiling there is a firm silence.

in authenticity, nothing very much else is spoken.

at the end of this nightsea journey i prepared a feast for my army of artists.

one came to witness in peace.

one to bring the marines.

one to speak diplomacy.

and then we ate.

eggplant will probably punctuate every significant event of my life.

this sweet feast celebrated love.

the marine spoke fervantly about love.

he compared the illusion of not-love.

for him i propped an overboard on the mantel:

"Only Love Shall Enter Here"

for the witness, the course in miracles.

for the diplomat, massage.

by instrument

i am not sure how far it will take me
--these poetix and machinations of will.

can't someone just pull over?

the dream evaporation is really the last straw.

some of these puzzles pull out stops before i ring the bell.

in nashville a woman is preparing.

in louisville, valley to valley.

in gouges we shuttle every missile fast;
we may ignore the stone nation;
fly ayers dead
what reckon.

i tell you love steel and pinnings
carry something ahead, two things in my heart,

balance hope surefooted
aggregate underfoot
now pops in my neglect.

no one pushes out the night like he
no one guards my sleep until the night sanctified.
no one like he.
no, one

what raised me up was wit, piracy, gesticulation.

swashbuckle,
my firing a high burn

lever, fulcrum, my past rebellion.

all over the wonderment we went running.

i fell tangled in hair.

i fell

up trestle, cross ranges,

in idaho and nevada

i send you this night
of my regard.

winsome, caution.
i lick these margins.
i touch an edge

lonesome in the tower and skipping.
i am solace, her true.

on the rise red smoke, driven
--a day mine is now forgiven.

once you kissed my mouth

once you tangled me in hair.

along oceans

out of feet
in utereo
we cave

i left home while standing in doorways

forever
i left home with someone i hadn't met.

where my manifest has pain

i fall in the tangle

i fall in the hair.

Why Am I Wonderful

There are really bad days.

Some of us like to string them together to create really bad stories or, at least, really bad chapters.

And…as they say in certain places I’ve been…there’s usually someone who will co-sign that kind of akashic b.s.

they aren’t hard to find.

The law of spiritual equivalency will win out.

So…I’d like to introduce a remedy.

Find someone to co-sign another parable for yourself.

Conduct a Why Am I Wonderful survey.

Totally skew the sample.

Totally bias your results.

Ask the question: Why Am I Wonderful?

Today is the day of the black mamba.

Who cares that my legend is not factual?

Who cares that it is kundalini rising?

The only known antidote is this survey.

Here are the results.

Why Am I Wonderful?

You are enigmatic.

You are artistic.

You are cute.

You are the sweetest woman I’ve ever met.

You are compassionate.

You are talented.

You are ethereal.

You are an angel.

You are brilliant.

You are kind.

Thank you, my army of light. Thank you.

fotogenix

there are some amazing fotos at this site
http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/keenan/

please visit and celebrate the summer of love on me.

challenges

crises abound.

challenges extraordinaire.

a very ill man told me, "you, too, are being corrected."

he thought the bandages on my arm made us kindred punishees.

he has settled in my mind.

he knocks when the energy sags.

i have been thinking lighter thoughts to chase him out:

what are the things i love,

what are the funny things that have happened.

when the sense of humor goes, there goes hope.

when the exquisite sense of what is love-able goes,

there go my palliatives.

I love this man.

http://www.jeffreyscottholland.com/

Snuggle Nights

the snuggle nights are coming!

the a.m. brought the news!

i see saturated paint washes everywhere!

i see images falling off the edges!

everything is so jam-packed!

Fall de Rall

The morning is finally crisp!

Welcome cool breezes!

Welcome new beginnings!

Welcome a season of creation!

Psycho-Interviews Soon!

the great psycho-interviews will begin this week!

i am so excited.

at least 5 are scheduled.

stay tuned for these great interviews with fabulously gifted people.

like ringing a bell

phil doutaz and jimmy anasazi dropped into a southend bar to sit in with a blues band tonight. they were amazing.

at break, talk was round about the giant crystal caves that have been discovered in recent years.

folks think the drivers of this planet are being discovered.

it is, at the very least, an awesome possibility.

having these crystals exposed and interacting directly with humans...
well, that seems like a divine appointment.

good things all around.

edible favors

the best times are when the conversation turns to doing the right thing and things work out.

a falafel goes down easy on the backporch with the guys talking among themselves about this dude and that gig.

someone mentions dylan and who has his songwriter stuff all sewn up.

someone else wonders what else was happening in 1968 besides his own plan.

the breeze blows in from new orleans tonight.

in the sweaty evening we are close.

i am satisfied.

reggae jazz

a sweltering night where the humidity lays draped across everything
and the a/c strains but can't keep its cool
dreadlox in the lamplight
knit caps in all this heat
hair, lots of hair

inside the band sweats
electronix orbit the air
satellite sounds
circle the night

i'm looking for a gig, man
well, just keep working on it
it'll happen.

psycho-interviews

i have random questions i would like to ask guests.

who is up for it?

you can use a pseudonym if you like.

to protect your reputation and all that.

sample questions: what is that you're standing on?

how feverish have you been and what did it say to you?

provided you were a child, what toy do you feel the most shame about?

let me know if you'd like to be interviewed.

we'll put a bucket on your head if it helps.

call to all beings who will do no harm

one of us is in trouble.
well, more than one of us really, but this is one that we'd readily claim is what i mean.
she isn't a shadow person, you see.
we'd like her to be.
we'd like to have the luxury of xenophobic denial.
we'd like to carry on with a dissociated and happy existence.
today we can't.

she suffers with the passionate desire to not do what she does.
she carries her own prison wherever she goes.
and like every incarcerated soul, she is frantically searching for that safe place
where no matter what, her soul will escape.

she has tried solitary confinement.
but when she was put into the hole the assailants came with her.

she has tried willing herself into steel.
she is much too pliable for that.

she has tried to continue to live cheerfully for others
but, of course, her iron curtain obscures them now.

so
she is in trouble. desperate trouble.

the kind of trouble that murders the soul.

this is the worst kind of trouble.

it is beyond the biological imperative.

it calls for the biological imperative to abort.

can you see her faint light?
can you remember why light, any light, comes from this direction?

she is summoning you.
she is in dire distress.

this is the last call.

dig in to the shadowy geography.
remember your compassion, however fatigued.

send hope out with exhalation.
bring comfort in with every breath.

every being who will do no harm,
answer the call.

one of us is down.

one of us.

angelic genetix

ancient tribes

angel eyes

meteoric circulatory systems

vital pulsation
vital temp

see additional references for specifix

strong impressions

victims always call out.

this field we live in is our own www. none of us are separate unless we go offline.
the pleas of people in pain swirl around us in this water. they are sent out with such passion that we miss them only by dissociating into our culture of denial.

the clues are always there like the tiny chime that says someone has opened a chat.

reach out to those who seem silent but carry themselves around in their own prison.
you'll see the slump, the darting eyes, the weary smiles.

you won't be able to intervene most likely, but there is always the palliative of warmth, acknowledged presence and availability.

report even the suspicion of abuse. you never know, even the tiniest ripple of help may wash onshore somewhere.

shadowy, grumbly angeles

the temperatures are bringing out the ferocity
the grumbly
the shadowy
the brave

ideas are sprouting up
basted and golden brown

what's a wilty wing or so?
what's a heatrash
and what's a harumph!?

the messy biz o life, i say
the messy biz o life.

gracious

the things that happen to us don't just happen.
we make them.

grace is a great friend & fan.
she exemplifies this.

a believer in co-creation, she is leaping into the lap of her highest good.

blind faith has the advantage of x-ray vision.
it cuts through the illusion of limitation.

it operates from the true vision of psychic knowing.

houston, we have pots

i spoke with john whitman a few days ago.

he's in houston (he thinks. he hardly goes out of the house or studio).

wherever he is, he's certainly continuing to produce great work!

his vessels swell and breathe, pull the hand along bellies, over smooth curves, inside their cool purposes and presence.

see for yourself at http://twinpinespottery.com

and don't miss the photo of the reclusive one!

heroes with technocratic credentials

the geeksquad arrived to save my soul.

what odd packages our heroes come in!

dressed like the beloved trig teacher of my teen-dom, he ignited whatever is brave and true in my distressed frontal lobe.

i love him.

i want to make tedious italian dishes for him in this humiditure of hell.

how i wear my heart on my proverbial sleeve!
who cares!

i can now surf and scan.

i can now dump all intellectual properties onto the ethers of my universe!

i can chat and mail and post and search!

i can snooze with these mighty capabilities also asleep on my belly!

god bless the ethernet!

god bless bill gates!

god bless nikon!

god bless jimmy & remie & phil & jeffy & virgil & grace & carol & karlie & diane & &....

god bless agent chris!

every woman needs her geek!

ladies, grab that strange guy in the lab coat!

sidle up to the other one who babbles about anti-matter!

kiss the guy who tweaks and tinkers!

find a man with an understanding of gear!
a love of calculus!
a jeep full of cords and saws and drills!

find a man with a serious respect for red sauce!

put them all in the rollidex.

marinate them gently.

god bless em!

messenger of the gods

my shaman friend called yesterday to curse, giggle and lovingly torment me. i remembered an old alaskan story about special friends who would shout insults to each other publicly in good humored affection, strengthening their relationship...and how Don Juan Matus would trick and antagonize his friends & apprentices then roll on the desert floor laughing.

so my friend reports a glorious spectacle last a.m.--a clumsy adolescent hawk practicing his hunt but not able to close the deal. wrens outsmarted him, squirrels frightened him & blue jays talked trash.

my friend saw a gift of power in his hawk's drama--not yet able to close the deal, he is a baby practicing his stealth & his courage, practicing to realize his own nature.

raising one's personal power up through the unopened pathways of fear & self-doubt...facing the demons of one's quivering intent--claiming focus, claiming ferocity, claiming who i am...wielding that power with grace & balance despite my fear...

my friend laughs at his own clumsiness, approaches his own Squirrel of preparedness then misses his tasty meal in irrational doubt. unable to close the deal.

but the thing about my friend is that he is a skillful warrior. he is balanced with integrity & compassion. he is blessed with a keen eye & its lofty perspective. he can fly high above this earthly dilemma.

the world is a stumble. the world is a tyrant of timing, a disheveler of poise and bravery, but being brave has nothing to do with one's level of fear, my friend. bravery is a deliberate act despite one's terror.

the underbelly of jets

the trapdoors of mystery flew open and everywhere I slept became
fraught, wrought and tangled.

in a dream show none of my pieces arrived so i buy anthropomorphic ones to tie hand-torn fabric around. they were spectacular.

a boyfriend says “you forgot Thundergrove” so he drives me toward rushing waters around limestone rims. knowing the brittle topography I bury my face in anxiety, but have to peek at the geode treasures there for the taking.

a tune from Gone Fire rises toward its crescendo. an ocean boils in her transformation threatening to take highway one, but I’m 17 again hitchhiking to big sur, homesick, inching my way to true home where giant fronds in their arboretum of mammoths wait to shelter me.

on the stove the last of a forgotten stew sticks to the pan.
“it is irresponsible to cook while you sleep!”

at 3 a.m. I need a back rub not for muscles but for comfort. then at 7 the pecan coffee pulls me out.

in the kitchen slabs of fuchsia line the shelves like fairy soldiers in their auric bodies. i see them for the 1st time.
who knows how long it will take to dry them in this relentless humidity?

on the porch…jets crack the clouds to boston, detroit, new orleans and atlanta.

neighbor walks the pup.

how i miss california where light makes love to polaroid!

squirrels carry away green apples and walnuts, chartreuse orbs of booty.

i must write to karlie in seattle and diane in Tucson.

petunias lift on the breeze.

mango and muffin for breakfast.

life is messy.

exquisite juice and crumbs, i land on Tuesday.

hitchhiking

jimmy and remie have a fantastic project going. jim has been using a 1963 mosrite guitar as he experiments with feedback solos done through a VoxAC30 amp. what is truly amazing is that he has banked quartz and feldspar around the amp! part of his trip east has been to gather up more gear for this project which is still unnamed. phil is loading him up with 3rd order ham crystals dating pre-1950.

ever-interested in sound, electronics and metaphysics, jim is excited to combine all 3 loves (make that 4 including remie) in this work. as he chatted it up he dropped some great quotes (as usual). my favorite:

“Valence electrons are the hitchhikers of the universe”, he says, describing the need for quartz and feldspar in the studio. apparently he intends to go along for the ride.

the rez-a-nator, his lovely wife and assorted nare-do-well’s will release this project on their Blue label.

I’ll keep you posted when more info comes.

anasazi & st. claire

just as the dusty summer settled in to an oppressive doldrum, jimmy anasazi and remie st. claire arrived, without warning, from albuquerque on the way to trade gear with phil doutaz in buffalo, ky. they stayed over for eggplant, tea and sleep. in between, sweet music filled the house, healing it and me. more on their alchemical sonics later...

constructs

an interesting thing happened on the back porch. i was sitting among the remnants of carpenters and plumbers trying to find clear spaces internally while watching the uncluttered sky. all the droppings--the endcuts of boards and pipe and countertops were scrambling for attention despite my efforts to look through the trees into the emptiness above them. eventually i surrendered, found a sharpie and a pencil and set out to claim the endcuts as my own. now there are musings on tunnel vision, splinters and serenity dotting the porch. the workmen have inspected them as evidenced by their rearrangement. watch for them.

jsh

The very discerning JSH has sent his blog blessings this a.m.--"Groovy cool!"

I look forward to frequent cyber-teas in which he comes to chat.

His is a standing invitation though he will generally sit if not racing about to hammer nails, rummage through my books & paint or inventory the fridge.

Meanwhile, please visit him for fries and coke at

http://www.jeffreyscottholland.com/

and

http://www.jshnyc.com/


Take a small engraved gift or cooling aid if you want him to love you forever.

opening day

7/26/07

Today was topsy-turvy. I spilled it all out to mee-mo in a phone call of psychoanalytic free association. distant, the pursuit of happiness, imaginary children with buh sounds in their tiny clown names and a biracial inner child. who knew?

hmmm...i count the blessings of such a mess: work arrived in denver ready to launch, 3 series have raised their heads begging for attention and tara continues to dog the snafu's of cyberspace for me.

workmen are clamouring over the house, through the attic, up the backstairs, in the laundry room...nice men with big hearts, bless em. they'd rather be making music. i am grateful for their skills and their generosity.

carol es caught me off-guard yesterday when i found "Empty Dart" on her site. i had a corrective experience some 40 years post the original trauma. please see her amazing work. http://esart.com/