Crossroads Dispatches

speak to my soul

Today, I walked a fair distance  to go to the cafe that speaks to my soul.

There's another quite functional cafe around the corner from me. Were I  wanting coffee, it'd do.

"We're spiritually starved in America and not underfed, but undernourished." - Carol Hornig

At this cafe poetry flows. The main elements: warm blond woods everywhere, hardwood floors, sunlight streaming through glass, no wifi, owners that know your name. Fired play and rainbowed glass art. Wall of teapots: flowered teapots, porcelain teapots, shiny silver teapots, glazed teapots. Cerulean blue plates, giraffe bookmarks, sleek Italian almond hazelnut ginger lemon syrups, intricate little jewel boxes fluttering memories of Murano colors and Venetian sunglasses, undulating anemone ashtrays. Enormous pottery redolent of a woman with an alabaster jar, or maybe something you'd heave to the well for your daily quench. One jar like colossal conch shell, another jar amazonian emerald endive leaves, another striped watermelon ribbons of clay wending vine-like toward the minaret neck.

"It's meant to evoke the way an artist would live." - Ian Schrager, hmmm, does art speak to soul more than design?..."Rather than just slapping art up on the walls of the [Gramercy Park] lobby and guest rooms (although they'll do that too), its spirit will permeate the place."

From this cafe I twitter: "I imagine schools where weaving daydreams & sculpting magicscapes *IS* paying attention". In my journal, I twizzle with twitter poetry reserved for the walk home: "in my cosmic clan, we thrive on iridescent icosahedron not iPhones, fey not Facebook, music not Myspace (twitter is an exception ;-)"

I comprise storylines for performance art, plays, playgrounds. I ought to be able to write anywhere, be anywhere, thrive equally anywhere. The reality is some places sing and speak to my soul, while others are muted, holding back their song.

"If we are sensitive, we can feel when environments are awakened. Human beings can be more or less awakened. So can trees or a mountain, canyon, hilltop, or a particular street corner in our neighborhood. When we are sensitive, we can feel these things. When we expose ourselves to that awakeness, to that environment where spirit and matter are harmonized, it helps us awaken. Ultimately, that's what satsang is. That's also what meditation really is." - Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing (practically have this Harmonization chapter memorized)

It's so simple really I'm confounded why I ever second-guess my heart and gut: that cafe feels warm, feels good to me. Simple.

p.s. A walk on a gorgeous day is better than icing on the cake. Twittered these via text messaging enroute: round table convenes outside.princely jasmine, regal agapanthus, sheathed magnolia knights in armor share tree w/ grail cups of perfumed bliss and: Summer of love: walkin 2 café where every1 knows yr name & spot bold california poppy orange 72 Volkswagon bus 4 sale.tempted

learning edge, or you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf

"A university can provide you with a library, but what makes the book you are not looking for fall off the shelf into your hands to give you the material you need is not understood by any university." - William Irwin Thompson, Darkness and Scattered Light (kinda like this book jumped off the shelf, kaboom!, at Kaboom book shoppe in New Orleans)

My blogging bud, Colleen at Communicatrix tagged me with the What's Your Learning Edge meme (p.s. she'll be delving into hypnotism): "I invite you to pick something that you’ve always been curious about, and dive into it with all the passion of a two-year-old on a playground." Goodie!

"Feel free to mention any books you’re reading, classes you’re taking, people you’re learning from or collaborating with, etc. Tell us about the gems you’re picking up, the fun you’re having, etc., especially if they’re shifting the way you look at what you do." - Adam Kayce, Monk at Work, "What's Your Learning Edge?" (p.s. he'll be delving into the Law of Attraction)

"To know the pine, go to the pine. To know the bamboo, go to the bamboo," scribed the wandering hermit haiku poet Basho eons ago. (BTW, all who wander are not lost.)

I'd like to edge myself to draw forth my own innate sage and abide by that sage especially when it veers from convention. To swing when and where my hip feels the beat especially when I'm not on a dance floor. To rekindle the communication that transcends language, that expands the soul and speaks fluidly to Yours, especially when my brain clings to encylopedias. And trust the soul knows how to do this in the doing of it.

And when you come to the crossroads
And you're deciding in the dark
You've gotta listen to the whisper of your heart - Trisha Yearwood, Listen to The Whisper in Your Heart

In short, to learn how to commune directly, immediately, with higher self's Will to guide my soul's highest evolution.

1. plumb my own innate wisdom

So no searching out books, classes, workshops, websites, experts, etc. on how to be a soul pilgrim, and confirm that I'm on the right track. (If I'm supposed to be exposed to an outer teaching, it'll effortlessly drop in my lap.)

I'll be going to straight to the pine, touching the bark, smelling the needles, hearing the roots heave sighs, seeping pine bark tea with the spring water from the Well, for myself. Then sipping this tea with wise children and mischievious merlins for companions. I shall leave the comprehensive, illustrated field guide to North American pines at the library.

"When the living descendant of the lineage of Rumi - his name was Jelaluddin Chelabi - visited Atlanta, he sat me down and said "What religion are you?" I just threw up my hands. He says, "Good. Love is the religion, and the universe is the book."" - Coleman Barks, "Fall in Love the Rumi Way", Beliefnet.com

When I am a stranger in a strange land, without any maps, I want to be able to call spontaneously on higher guidance, be aligned with true north, follow the signs strewn through the universe, and sense my own way Home.

Ian Schrager, born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, has always run his business – by instinct ["not market research or logistics"]. “I always work viscerally. I throw myself into new projects like a man who’s besotted with a woman. It’s completely emotional. When I want something, it’s a gut-reaction…” - "But Who Is Ian Schrager?" French Vogue

2. sway from the hip

"If someone has a reputation for "telling it like it is," he is often said to shoot "from the hip." For a cowboy, such an action would indicate impulsiveness, and perhaps a lack of self-control. For a martial artist, it could indicate total readiness at all times, acting instinctively without need for aim or preparation.

For a Star Child who is totally connected and operational, being "hip" is about living within a kind of FLOW. It is an alignment that happens between nature, circumstance, and one's deep inner self. When we live "from the hip," we are functioning at all times from this balance of spontaneity and Oneness with All That Is." - Daniel Jacobs, "The Star Children"

3. speak in the tongue of the soul

I twittered today, "i imagine schools where the tongues of color sound light geometry glyph & symbol are teacher, deepening conversation w/ sphinxes, scarab, ravens, river Niles, trees, trolls &"

"Little by little, the planet is developing a UNIVERSAL TONAL VOCABULARY -- consisting of physical symbols, sounds, colors, words, and phrases that immediately invoke virtually the same inner experiences, wherever they appear." - Daniel Jacobs, "The Living Language of Light"

4. just do it even if it's never been done before, learn by doing, the total immersion approach

"The residents of the Haight [pre-1967], remembers Richards, were mostly students and artists, drop-outs from various political movements. "San Francisco was a magnet for those kind of people," says Richards. "It attracted people who had been involved in social protests and were tired of preaching about it." They came to San Francisco, he said, "to be what they were talking about." - Dave Richards, Janis Joplin roadie and her Porsche artist

I'd love to tag Nick Smith, Siona van Dijk, Marilyn, Leah, and Eve to join What's Your Learning Edge? foray. No child needs an invite to explore and expand. It's an open call, eternally calling in sweet song.

p.s. The quote in the headline is from Jon Kabat-Zinn. Imagine I shall be practicing my fluency of the soul language of light, color, glyph, and myth more here.  Perhaps a wee less D.J. remixing, and more of my own original live music? Yearning for immersive sensory multidimensional experience that's only possible in the world of matter, beyond bits and bytes.  Love to collaborate with a few magical kids in San Francisco to weave together something hands-on in July if you're in the neighborhood (I'll be in the Mission, near 24th and Folsom).

p.p.s. Heeding the truth of my own soul guiding itSelf towards its highest evolution automatically is congruent with the law of One, law of love, law of creating (a.k.a. law of attraction), and glides one to fulfillment, grace, ease, love and abundance.

Art: Children painting mural photo via Rochester Art Center's "art in the classroom" program site; a Lineage II game character, a hip and ready elven; unknown painting of a bard via Druidry Information Pack, by David Smith.
 

fifth dimension: and love will steer the stars

"My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." - Pablo Picasso

"Each of us are on the spiralling journey of our Soul, and conspiring (beathing together); it only seems we are here buying and selling," I twittered earlier today. I was thinking about how to answer a request from a young marketeer who is going to begin blogging for their company.

I don't write about marketing as a separate music genre any longer. I see this entire universe as music, birthed from primordial sound. Being poetic, I'm being quite literal as well.

"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument." - Carl Jung

I see trios and intimate bands drawn together the way tuning forks quicken. Interlocking with other bands the way the flower of life mandala twines. Resounding resonance amasses in waves of mass movements. All is vibration seeking to sing in tune, in harmony. Melody harmony rhythm arises in symphony, each crescendo and finale fluidly leading to the next improvization with perhaps a fluxing dance ensemble of instruments, a new merry band of pranksters. The music goes on and on, even the gaps, the silence, the shuffling of feet is incorporated into the river of music.

"When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality." - Dom Helder Camara

I was thinking about 5D the other day, and came across The Fifth Dimension's "Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" 1969 video. (Recommended listening. Groovy planetary zooming and zipping. Very apropros, and I'd have embedded right here if it'd been allowed.)

If you had to pin me to define 4D, I'd say that's the imaginal realm, or wherever it is you deem your ideas come "from." If you had to pin me to define 5D - well, honestly if you're pinning and I'm defining we've definitely left the realm of 5D - I'd say that's the realm where your soul is singing in a conspiracy of beauty, a concert of One with a kaliedoscope of sacred mirrors.

Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius - "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", The Fifth Dimension

Regardless of appearances in flatland, we are never mute.

Yet what is the soundtrack of our lives humming?

I sing the body electric
I glory in the glow of rebirth
Creating my own tomorrow
When I shall embody the earth - "I Sing the Body Electric", Fame

I'm not sure how long I can keep up the 3D tone here at this blog.

Some people claim they don't understand when I write 4D. This is an example of the way I write when I'm firing all 4D cylinders: Nonlinear sworly soup w fractal laser fog and buzzing prana and ringed torus serpentine infinitudes of delish delight de light.

The vibration is moving, morphing and will probably end up of its own accord somewhere else. Kind of the way I just started adding photos from Flickr one day, and that morphed to art from my friends and famous artisans, and finally that sashayed its way into what you see today.

And you'd think looking backwards with 20/20 hindsight that I planned this as some master strategy seeing as most of my new blog readers come from Google's image search function.

No calculation. No strategy. All I did was glide with the music.  

We might say that the group Fifth Dimension won the musician's lottery in recording the hit classic "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" if you ascribe to randomness.

We might say that they were astute marketers following their strategy marketing plan if you ascribe to MBA theories.

When you flow with the Tao - that's living in 5D. Following instinct after instinct, that divine music within collaborates with the divine music without until the seam is seen through and through as a construct, a figment of the imagination, so "within" "without" is simply "with" - that's living in 5D.

The Fifth Dimension was simply jamming with the universe, in five dimensions:

Florence said, "It was a real fluke. We were performing in New York City and Billy lost his wallet in a taxi. The man who returned it invited us to see a play he produced. [Interesting how the music weaves together perfectly.] The play of course was Hair. Well we heard Aquarius and we all just looked at each other and said 'We've got to sing this song. It's great.'" It was producer Howe who suggested splicing Aquarius together with lyrics from another number in the musical which became "Let The Sunshine In". [No coincidence: If you've become aware of 5D, you'll know how the solar star fits in.] He got together with arranger Bob Alcivar & put the two songs together, making them work as one single. "We recorded that song in Las Vegas, in this small studio," says LaRue. "Our voices were all tired, we'd been performing there for over a month. It was the quickest thing we ever recorded and it was one of our biggest hits." [Yup 5D simply glides.] They were very close to the railroad tracks, and while they were singing the final chorus, a train rumbled by. You can still hear the locomotive, though, just barely, on the final master.

"Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" remained in the #1 spot on Billboard's chart for 6 straight weeks and remained in the Top 40 for 16 weeks. Both the single and album "Age Of Aquarius" went Gold and received two Grammy Awards for Record Of The Year and Best Contemporary Vocal By A Group. They were also nominated for Album Of The Year. The song was also nominated for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist. The song eventually sold over three million copies, making it the biggest selling single that year. The original song was over 7 minutes long and it was Bill Drake of a Los Angeles radio station who suggested the song needed to be shortened to about 3 minutes; so Howe released 2 versions, one just over 3 minutes and one under 3 minutes." - The Fifth Dimension, profile from ClassicBands.com

p.s. Nope, multidimensional and hyperspace art is not a throwback to the sixties. I'm just playing with the 1969 Fifth Dimension mythos. Much hyperspace art has not been created yet, although it's all been created too, and at the same time simultaneously. Here's a modern hyperspace artist, Paul Laffoley's work, The WORLD SOUL of Plotinus - travel between two and three-dimensional forms (2001).

Art: A multidimensional Buddha photo, by Celia Fenn, from her newsletter, Earthlog May 2007: ("This image conveys the feeling of the Buddha energy in the 21st century, for me. It is a "multi-dimensional" image. It was taken into a shop window, in a street in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, when I was there last month. There is the image of the Buddha "floating" in the foreground. Then, the reflections of the buildings in the shop window, and if you look very closely, you can see me, taking the image, with my friend, Jeanne. There are layers of imagery creating a "holographic" image of the Buddha energy in a specific place and time."); Fifth Dimension 1970 album cover, Portrait; Dawn Grace's "Soundtrack of Our Lives" concert poster via the interdimensional ezine, Turntable + Blue Light); Hair original publicity poster (looks like infinity symbol, eh?); Paul Laffoley, The WORLD SOUL of Plotinus - travel between two and three-dimensional forms (2001).

Bonus: I glid across this more scientific and mathematical blog, Dialogos of Eide, that seems to speak frequently of 'extra' dimensions. "Plato," the author states, "Dreams of science came later in life, although I had this predisposition to always wanting to know the mysteries of life." (Me too.) This post, "Vision", resounds loud and true, including this quote from Dr. Michio Kaku's article "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey, A look at the higher dimensions":

"Why must art be clinically “realistic?” [Even artists have confined Reality.] This Cubist “revolt against perspective” seized the fourth dimension because it touched the third dimension from all possible perspectives. Simply put, Cubist art embraced the fourth dimension. Picasso's paintings [just a coincidence that I started this post using a Picasso quote, and later in a Google image search for "fifth dimension poster" found the science and cosmology blog...and found this article...yes, it's all One Co-incidence fluidly fluxing] are a splendid example, showing a clear rejection of three dimensional perspective, with women's faces viewed simultaneously from several angles. Instead of a single point-of-view, Picasso's paintings show multiple perspectives, as if they were painted by a being from the fourth dimension, able to see all perspectives simultaneously. As art historian Linda Henderson has written, “the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry emerge as among the most important themes unifying much of modern art and theory."

Bonus Deux: Snippet from Ascension Magick (not Christopher's complete description of Age of Aquarius): "The fabled Age of Aquarius is promised to be the Golden Age reborn. The reason for this is that Aquarius is the sign of universal sisterhood/brotherhood. Aquarius is the sign of freedom and individuality, where all are able to freely express themselves.

could you or I believe how fantastically weathly they all became?

I run across more & more hyperspace artists everyday.

Sometimes the art may arise unbidden from an unconscious quest question that arises from the seventh dimension or the fifth octave of our multidimensional existence. The question a breathing being of its exhaling its own universes, visitors and dwellers.

A play of consciousness that pervades every masterpiece of inbreath & outbreath, every interstitial realm, every parallel universe within parallel universe, fractally holographically multiversally limitless infinity. Questions that unfurl of their own without prodding like:

"How can perception, an act of perceiving which is receptive, be the same as the active process of creation?" - "The Infinity Codes of 2007", Starchild Global

Don't necessarily look for hyperspace art at your uptown museum. That art tends towards the retrospective.

Hyperspace art may show up in the guise of the graffiti artist, the street performer, the acrobat clown, the fractal equations playing with the astrophysicist, the bedtime story you're telling your child that morphs in the telling, the unusual conversation about the cosmic Egg, unicorns, simultaneous timelines, aborginal songlines you're engaged in the initial 3.33 minutes with the seeming stranger at the bank checkout line.

You never know. But on the other hand you know when you feel it.

You know because you are this multithreaded existence. You have been there in your imagination. A sense of deja vu so refined it is as ethereal as a griffin feather's touch. So subtle that you aren't sure if you are officially awake or merely dreaming this art into existence on the spot. You known this from the 'tween terras of sleeping dreams. And in the haunting dragon wind that flashes sweeps reverberates up and down your spine.

"We should be wondering tonight, "Is there a world?" But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin’ on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out." - Jack Kerouac (soul kin, a pioneer to the counterculture of the sixties and muse to many hyperspace revelers)

Here graphic novelist meets visionary comic strip:

"Quoting again Patrick Farley's visionary future [Electric Sheep Comic's Chrysalis Colossus, or, An Illustrated Blue Unicorn Travelogue], "Could you or I believe how fantastically wealthy they all became?" we can now see what this might mean. When wealth is separate from accumulation but refers to a richness of relationships, each person's wealth makes everyone wealthier. Art, the creation of beauty, will no longer be limited by what we can afford, for money will be art's ally not its enemy." - Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity (from Chapter 7, The Age of Reunion)

Consider treating yourself to a vortical excursion of your 360 degree spherical life. Unhinge from linear time and travel into your present future through the fiction of the graphic storyteller (they call themselves comic strip) recommended above: the Chrysalis Colossus.

 "Ask yourself,"

said the Caterpillar,

"is there really such a thing as a 'trivial occurrence' at all?"

- Chrysalis Colossus, by Electric Sheep (my favorite line)

p.s. "If a librarian isn't sure where to shelve a book, that may be because the material is interstitial in some way, not fitting comfortably into a single, conventional literary category." More hyperspace art is coming. In the very near future, and it will absolutely shatter attempts at single, linear, conventional categories. Boundless as outer space, through the art you won't be tethered to comfortable, single, conventional categories either.

Instead of discrete fits and starts,  digital 0's and 1's, on and offs, Boolean true and false - duality's offspring glides in one fluid fluxing symphony of electric hues and magnetic glyphs. Occupying many categories simultaneously they'll totally flabbergast librarians and curators. (The word category ceases to have meaning.)

p.p.s. No coincidence some of these artists were labelled ADD as kids: hyperactive, impulsive, inattentive quite often equates to hyperdimensional, spontaneous, nonlinear. Hyperspace art is quite ADD. Ritalin and other restraints are akin to the librarian's quandry, How do we shelve this confounding interstitial book conventionally comfortably in a single category on the shelf? Answer: It's not the book; the Dewey Decimel System ain't gonna work anymore, Alice. Consider this: take a second look at these kids not as defective, but as perfectly conceived for the age and time they are born into.

Art: A frame from Chrysalis Colossus, by Electric Sheep Comics artist Patrick Farley; glasswing butterfly photo via Splendid Pictures Around the Net (more transparent butterflies photographs there)...symbolically, as our own sense of transparency deepens, lightens, after the larval stage, and space pervades within and without, we 'bleed' more apparently into hyperdimensions.

by my old standards, I am going insane

Perhaps I ought be in the land of dreamscapes co-mingling with the sapphire phoenixes at 2 a.m., but I'm thoroughly entranced by a book I 'accidentally' discovered called The Ascent of Humanity, by Charles Eisenstein. (Of course, I stumbled upon the book googling "soul families." Naturally.)

In a heaven of people there's only some want to fly,
Ain't that crazy?
Oh babe... Oh darlin...
In a world full of people there's only some want to fly,
Isn't that crazy?
Ohh... But we're never gonna survive unless, we get a little crazy.. crazy..
No we're never gonna to survive unless we are a little.. crazy ..
- Crazy, by Seal

The chapter titled The Age of Reunion is exquisite with subchapters like: The Currency of Cooperation, Work and Art United, Back to Play, Storyteller Consciousness (highly apropos for bards this day and age), The Spirit of the Gift (a favorite), Falling In Love with the World.

Here's an essay in its entirety (not from the book), For Whom Was That Bird Singing, to whet your ecstasy. {Begin essay}

A thrush had alighted on a bough not five meters away… then began to pour out a torrent of song… Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness? – George Orwell, 1984

The purpose of life is not "to survive". Well, duh, everyone knows that. Or do we? Actually, in both biology and economics, the purpose of life is really nothing more than to survive. In biology, our behavior is supposed to be driven ultimately by our genes, which program us to act in their interests of survival and replication. It is thought that genes that programmed any other behavior would soon disappear from the gene pool. As for economics, we supposedly act in our rational self-interest, which is tabulated in money units. Money equals security, which arises out of the survival instinct.

Isn't it odd, though, that we all feel the existence of another purpose to life other than merely to survive, which is really just to live, which is really no purpose at all? In fact often it is survival anxiety that compels us to deny our sense of purpose, often with the words, "I cannot afford to." Written into human nature is the desire to share, to create beautiful things, to pour our music into nothingness. Sometimes I feel powerful urges toward generosity—with my money or time—but I'm afraid to act on them because, after all, will there be enough left for me? Rational self-interest gets in the way of my beautiful impulses. These impulses come so spontaneously, from such a deep place, that I do not hesitate to call them the real me.       

The irony is that the "rational self-interest" is a delusion, rational maybe but not in my interest. It follows from a deluded understanding of who I am, the "discrete and separate self" I keep talking about in my book. I am the world and the world is me. Saints and mystics have been trying to teach us that for thousands of years. Or actually, they've been trying to remind us. We have forgotten what was once universally obvious. Luckily, sometimes the truth breaks through like a ray of sunshine, and I remember how vast the sky is behind the closely overcast confinement of my narrow world of me and mine. And I realize that I will be okay.

All around, life exuberantly pours out its beauty. Do the birds really need to sing that much to find a mate and establish territory, and do the songs really have to be that beautiful? Surely a lesser caloric expenditure would suffice? Do flowers have to be that pretty and does the sky have to be that blue? Is it my imagination when the wind caresses me, or when the moon reflects the gaze of one I love far away? My rational mind can explain away all this beauty, but increasingly, I choose to believe.       

By my old standards, I am going insane.

Charles Eisenstein, 2005

{End essay.}

In a world full of people there's only some want to fly,
Isn't that crazy?

Thank the stars I keep stumbling upon those kin that want to fly.

p.s. I knew Eisenstein not only walked his talk, but was a soul relation, when he offered the entire text of the book, The Ascent of Humanity, online for free. "Many people have asked why I am making the entire text available for free. I explain some of the reasons on the "about" page, but I'm not really doing it for any reason. I'm doing it because it feels good, feels right."

Art: Flaming June, by Lord Frederic Leighton; wirecloth sculpture Reunion #2, by Dawn MacNutt; Fame, by Edmund Blair Leighton (no relation to Lord Frederic I presume; like how this painting whispers of so many tales upon tales, there is a story of celebration and reunion through song and story, and there is a story harking of ushering in a new aeon: a new minstrel takes over for the elder, and then there is the story of what the young bard spins to his muses, and...)

a requiem in multidimensional acts

And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing. To the flashing water say: I am. - Rainer Maria Rilke

"When mercury retro[grade] falls between two eclipses, as it does now, it asks you to address everything that you are afraid of remembering, of becoming, of doing. Mercury is at rest at this point of energy and history." - Gillian MacBeth-Louthan, June 2007 newsletter

requiem, etymology of: c.1303, from L. requiem, accusative sing. of requies "rest (after labor), repose," from re-, intensive prefix, + quies "quiet" (see quiet)

I have come to the end of a journey, and curiously I am feeling a little sorrow for all that has fallen away, even if it seems quite senseless and useless. One can get quite sentimental over anything, even balls and chains if they had accompanied you through the terrain of hardship, triumphs, and meandering adventure.

So this is a public requiem, perhaps in parts, for the dearly departed, so we may begin anew on a fresh adventure.

Goodbye! Goodbye to days where I care if I garner the respect of the Mister Vernon Dursleys: "He hurried to his car and set off for home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn't approve of imagination." - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

You used to sweep the floor at your cousin's recording studio. Were you a good sweeper?
No! I was never meant to have a real job.
So it's lucky [haha] this singing thing panned out. Otherwise, what else would you have done?
Not much. I think I would be asking you if you wanted large fries with that shake. - Jon Bon Jovi, Newsweek, June 25, 2007, interview with Jon Bon Jovi

Last night I'm google image searching for "solstice faerie" and come across this serene faerie enveloped by dark sheen. The caption reads: The only real fear, is the fear of oneself.

"Please honor your uniqueness, stand firm in your beliefs, and don't water down your capabilities by trying to conform...Remember that the bigger the purpose, the bigger the fear;  there's a correlation...Nervousness comes from ego concerns about people's opinions." - Doreen Virtue, Realms of Earth Angels

A friend texts me two days ago to ask me my first intention(s) so we can start play on a new venture (me: "This is not a business, it's a revolution.")

That day I am going through a crisis in faith. Going to the Wild West isn't the problem for this frontierswoman; it seems to be what those darn people Puritans and witch-burners back East might think.

Being original (i.e. myself) is challenging me in every way. My friend is eagerly texting away. Now something about ching and luan and ching luan or something ching ching ching....

my text message: Luan Ching? Hold on...me not ready...I am a fool. Like tarot. But we don't liv in world that respect fool. Still silly and dealin w that today

him: Ching an ancient taoist master.said to still be living in misty mountain, lao shan

Ching fool 2. madness sieve...amarita, manna, prana, ruah, huna, the ahhh sonida trumpet!

They do have them in japan

Fools respected n japan, eh...feelin better...two emails from new ppl accidentally haha found blog...they get it...god sent those just in nick of time

[I've left the computer and am walking about half a block from home carried away by a perfect yellow rose.]

Why nick of time? Wht u do if not nick

I was a drama major in another life...bards do that. Yellow rose would have saved me if not emails ;)

Good kidr

Who's kiddin..real absorbed embraced by sensuous honeylight rose

couple of yesterday twitterings: lazed in bed, pull Universe card today, the Fool comes full circle: wholeness, the perfection of life and the cosmos. New journey begins.

journey is over, time to begin again: social art,gifted kids,hyperspace art,golden age,art colony,5D gaia, the Fools shall inherit the Earth   

(BTW, Gaia is a huge clowner Herself.)

"We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks." - Richard Bach

Art: Solstice photo by Michael, a Brazilian-style drummer in NYC; Solar cross in the Burren, that's Poulnabrone Dolmen at sunset, Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland (I adore the desolate beauty of The Burren)

UPDATE: Aha! Fresh from the inbox, just got this energy alert from Karen Bishop where she discusses that solstices are times of releasing and "why we [may] feel so ughy." (See more in continue reading...)

UPDATE 2: Janet Swerdlow, author of Decoding Your Life, speaks on this topic in the excellent article "Moving On" about the dynamics of inner work and acting from our highest self. Snippets: "It only appears as though everything is falling apart when conversely, the reverse is true. In reality, everything that you have worked so hard for is finally coming together. As your inner world becomes more dynamic, anything that is stagnant in the outer world has to move out of it. Stagnation can no longer exist in your world...

You have chipped away at stagnation within your own inner process until it literally breaks. Now that you have broken through to the other side, and you are no longer in the status quo, you get scared. This is a normal reaction...

Take some time to grieve for the old as you release it...

Not everyone understands geographic moves, much less mental, emotional, and spiritual moves. Some people will try to hold onto you. You may try to hold onto them, or, try to make them fit into your new world...

Release your fear of the unknown, your guilt of letting go. Look to your new foundation that you are building. Hold the mind-pattern of your desired end result. How you will get there? One step at a time, on a path at this moment known only to your Oversoul [highest Self]. You will finally realize the completion of what you started so long ago when you first starting stirring your inner pot."

summer solstice: nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love

Last year same time I'd been scribing daily - nearly each dawn and dusk for forty days - my Walden Pond meets Anaïs Nin meets Rumi mutterings in my journal whilst lounging in my backyard. I say my, but literally it belongs to my housemate, who owns the home. Yet I say my because I simultaneously own the world entire and own no thing.

It was not simply me, the journal, pen, and Muse, however. One must have tea. Tea and toast. I was inspired by the Sri Lankans to stop everything, and frequently, and to do tea properly. With reverence. With devotion. With attention. With love.

I especially became enamored of the morning star tradition of "bed tea." When you're technically awake, just, yet truly in-between dreamscape thin place half-caught in the realms of stars and griffins and graal castles, a young butler knocks on your door with a tray of tea.

When I got back to San Jose, the young butler has vanished back into the futury past of banana trees and a gazebo bobbing on the river and a colonial mansion with a veranda where I watched the fishermen boat by lantern for shrimp at midnight.

However, the "bed tea" habit however had definitely not vanished. I waked easefully at dawn unbidden that magical summer. (Ranks as a minor miracle if you know me.)

Our backyard is nothing most people would actually label a "garden." It resembled the Garden of Eden well after the Fall. The front and backyards were generally neglected for thirty-odd years.

"I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day."  - F. Frankfort Moore, A Garden of Peace

Eros and Orpheus courted in that garden. So that I saw the beauty beyond the gossamer veils of despondency and decay. Entranced by the way alpenglow shone upon the breast of the morning dove perched on the electric lines. Mesmerized by the delicate exploratory insects canyoneering deep in the purpled walls of morning glories. Lullubied by the sensuality of the lemon earrings hanging from the empress trees. Romanced by the perfect roseate sacred geometry of the camellias. Charmed by the dandelion haze paint shedding from the serpentine stone lion. Devoted to watching the dawn snails gingerly glide their labyrinths in sacred prayer.

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl

This became no ordinary garden. This is Paradise.

"Who can tell the dancer from the dance?"  - William Butler Yeats

Our weekly Sunday night book group moved from the living room to the backyard for the duration of summer. During the ten-minute meditations you could hear the morning dove whisper lovenotes to its beloved, the laughter of neighboring children tingling like glass and shell chimes, the solar breezes kiss our cheek -- ten minutes collapsed into timelessness.

The garden of Eden is wholy, holy, innocent of time.

"No two days are the same in one garden." - Hugh Johnson

While my housemate (and homeowner) worked away in Washington state, I would not allow my other housemate to mow the lawn. I was ascending in love for the untrammelled wild grasses and wildflowers, and even the common yellow and russet buttoned weeds shimmered gold.

"Nouveau meadow," nods one of the Sunday group members approvingly.

By the end of summer, my housemate buys a new celtic green patio umbrella to replace the soiled, torn and frayed one.

"You cannot continually manifest your will without contemplating the force that connects all things, that allows you to do magick." - Christopher Penczak, Ascension Magick: Ritual, Myth & Healing for the New Aeon (highly recommended: this, my voyagers, is the textbook for the Class of 2012)

My friend Ruby, noticing the unkempt lawn when she drives up last fall, nudges me to take a step, any forward momentum in the yard. (She is an ancient priestess, of this I know.)

"There is so much to be done!" I wail. "Where would I start?"

"Start anywhere. You only need to begin to nudge." I wasn't really sure whom or what we were nudging, but I found myself spending an entire day raking last autumn, and after eight trashloads, I felt I'd only begun to stratch the surface. The bushes and earth underneath were like a mirage that kept being swallowed by the shifting sands of sienna and doe-brown leafy pilings. It was hard to tell I'd lifted a finger at all.

"The Magic's Path leads to dead end. Love is a True Magic!" - Boris, an extraordinary seven-year-old Russian who recalls his past life on Mars; hmmm, out of the mouth of babes ;)

This year I've spent more time in the outer rings and ripples of the Garden of the neighborhood, in the park and the condo grove of sequoia and raven, rather than the backyard. Partly because my housemate-owner has major yardwork going on for the last month or so - a complete overhaul including installing a sprinkler system, planting new seed (much of the grass out front was dead), and pruning. Partly because I feel called to weave a broader garland of blessings.

It was tonight sitting outside at dusk eating brie, grapes, and sourdough toast from a local artisan bakery (with tea of course) that it dawned on me that this major yard transmutation was in fact an act of magick.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

In the movie, Don Juan DeMarco, Marlon Brando is asking Johnny Depp - aye, a classic Fool, particularly in this movie, but so too in Finding Neverland - how it is so many women swoon for him. Depp, playing the role of Don Juan replies (with Castillan accent):

"By seeing beyond what is visible to the eye. Now there are those, of course, who do not share my perceptions, it is true. When I say that all my woman are dazzling beauties, they object. The nose of this one is too large; the hips of another, they are too wide; perhaps the breasts of a third, they are too small. But I see these women for how they truly are... glorious, radiant, spectacular, and perfect... because I am not limited by my eyesight. Women react to me in the way they do, Don Octavio, because they sense that I search out the beauty that lies within until it overwhelms everything else. And then they cannot avoid their desire, to release that beauty and envelope me in it."

I had seen this garden. Imaged this garden. Played word games, world games with this garden. Loved this garden. Paradoxically, in a way, the devas, the Shining Ones, of the garden were overjoyed that a human had noticed both their beauty as is  and imaged their full regalia glory. And so they naturally fulfilled the fullness of their beauty.

"Magick opens the gateway between worlds, and we realize that it is not a religion, or only a religion, but a spiritual partnership with the unseen... We stop being people who do magick, using those hardware and software tools, and instead we become magick. We identify directly with the current that flows through these tools, that flows through all things. We stop doing magick and start living magick, eventually becoming magick." - Christopher Penczak, Ascension Magick

My owner-housemate was supposed to go to Arizona next week. "Why you'd postpone?" I ask her.

"Oh it's gonna sound silly," she says. "I wanted to be home to witness the first new blades of grass coming up." (Now that is Love speaking.)

I'm smiling, nodding: "Doesn't sound silly at all."

Love - and every inch of Life responds.

"Love is the most intimate bond between two souls [souls come in all shapes and sizes]. The two cups are symbols for a steady interchange, a continuous giving and taking in perfect balance. The nature of this card does not know of calculation and deception.

Life and Love are an inseparable unity. Give your love joyfully - and never be ashamed to also accept the love that is given to you. Exchange is the only way to keep love alive. If honesty stays strong and dominant there is no room for disappointment." - Two of Cups Tarot card (recall love knows of no humanly binds nor bounds)

p.s. I enjoyed both Waitress  and Once for expressions of selfless love (not your typical Hollywood "love" stories), and devotion to the Muse, whether She streams forth as Mermaid Marshmellow Pie or Irish yard-spinning tunes. Both simple, and magickal movies.

p.p.s. The headline a reference to Aleister Crowley's oft-quoted doctrine of magick: "Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God." Liber al vel Legis, 1:57

Art:  Summer panel in Four Seasons, by Alfonse Mucha; Yggdrasil, the World Tree, via SeeGull (I love his Immrama blog); Unicornis mysticalis via The Biblical Zoo (When God created the earth, He made a river which flowed from the Garden of Eden...Then God told Adam to name the animals... And the first animal he named was the unicorn...); Elven Lareda (a supposed "character" in a game, Lineage II, she's the elf type to dig in, hands dirty, shake yard out of its slumber)

lighting up through living gaia & twitter poetry

Groggy. I feel haunted by story of Jonah. Reluctant prophet. Me, reluctant scribe 4 the stars...caring what ppl think bout me...stupid fear - first text this a.m.

Haha just play...lite up. - friend's text message reply

Star star teach me how to shine shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say the hill's too steep
Well they talk and talk forever
But they just never climb - The Frames' "Star Star"

"Lite up", my friend's words echo. I thrived last summer on organic farmer's markets: heirloom tomatoes, juicy white peaches, potted basil, oranges, chocolate, almonds, fresh buffalo mozzarella, and earl grey with bergamot.

One day I simply found myself answering "no thanks" when my housemate offered me a spinach omelette. Eggs didn't call me any longer. Strawberries, blueberries and yogurt did. Rosemary garlic toast with moonlight spice white tea on other mornings.

One day my friend Ruby handed me some tomatoes and zucchinis from her backyard. One day they spoke to me, and their edible love brought tears to my ears.

I once watched the animating force drain away from a live squid taken from a fisherman's cage in that otherworldly azure bay spread before Phi Phi Don and Koh Jum islands, and watched that squid die before my feet while the motorboat zoomed that Christmas Day 2004 (day before the fateful tsunami). Within weeks, I was eating my favorite Thai basil with squid dish again. One day last summer, I simply stopped eating meat.

One day the world lightened up, and I with it.

"I don't think being tight and strict is healthy, in general," he says, adding that if you are going to eat a Big Mac, at least be conscious and enjoy yourself while you are doing it.

"As you transition from cooked to raw food, you'll be drawn to more and more living foods. You'll eat that way because you want to, not because you think you want to. The change will just happen. You don't have to try because it's not about willpower." - Rod Rotondi, owner of LA's Leaf Cuisine, "We Like It Raw", May 2007, Common Ground Magazine

I stopped being an environmental activist sometime in 2001. My last convert was my sister. Partly exhausted. But so too, somewhere my yearning to commune with people from all walks of life won out over persuading people what they ought to be and ought to do. I simply wanted to understand them as they were.

I'm a guilt-free green; an eco-epicurean. I bite my tongue and try not say too much about activism. Especially any activism against activists ;-)

I figure my example speaks loud and clear enough for itself. Other friends chided, "Why don't you get your car fixed?" (This was back when I did have the money to repair it.) "Wouldn't that make your life more convenient?"

I don't understand convenient. I do understand how my life has blossomed without a car.

I notice that the Live Earth concert's promotion is going gangbusters. I receive the Live Earth Twitter messages; pithy tips like:  Ironing clothes. Nearly 12 million pounds of hazardous solvents are released into the air yearly by our dry cleaners. Liveearth.org. 10:19 AM June 11, 2007

There's an organic drycleaners at the stripmall closest to my house. I have to pass by the sacred grove of sequoias, the flock of ebony ravens, and countless other beings on my way there. What on earth would I need drycleaned though? And I couldn't find my iron if my life depended on it. I'm not sure I own one, anymore. No one convinced me. No one could have convinced me. Ironing just dropped away from my life like an old worn shoe.

Star star teach me how to shine shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say the hill's too steep
Well they talk and talk forever
But they just never climb - The Frames' "Star Star"

If you've ever had a real heart-to-heart conversation with Gaia, you'll see she is precisely attuned on her evolutionary spiral journey. She's on track with her destiny. (She'll nudge you towards a remembrance that the word, destiny, is a code, a secret handshake between old friends. A trigger bringing back our attention to the Deity ESTablished IN You.) Then she challenges: Are you living your destiny, your Highest Self?

Summer, for me, is a time of live meals. Of lightness. I think that's why I'm smitten with Twitter. Simple. Spontaneous. Flirtatious. No craft, no technique, no scripting, no editing, no hemming and hawing, no trying to achieve the perfect post. Now, and now, before you blink - just blurt your heart out.

"Twitter: All the addiction of blogging, with 10% of the effort." - Hugh MacLeod (Hugh's twitter)

I'll certainly be blogging and twittering this Summer of Love 2007. Plus stuff of a more ephemeral artful nature is afoot at my Summer of Love pad in S.F. (Please swing by when I move in end of month.) Though the stockier stew of word-drenched essays may take a backseat for a while as I whip up frequent quirkier morsels of ambrosia.

p.s. Here's what my recent Twitter trail of word crumbs looks like (reverse chronological). I took the liberty of adding a few hyperlinks not in original for additional context. You can partake and subscribe calorie-free to my Twitter messages here.

eve11 attach picture? naked princess hold sceptre of solar cross, in other hand, tiger by tail, a pyre burns, she leaps into volcano of her dreams half a minute ago from web

eve11 day tarot Princess Wands:She tames the beast of fear.She is complete self-expression, in total disregard of all that is socially acceptable. 11 minutes ago from web

eve11   6/19/67 in history: Paul McCartney admits on TV that he took LSD ! http://tinyurl.com/2ywgg7 about 11 hours ago from web

eve11 sol: grab blankie, sleep outside, let shooting stars zip through velvet soul (xtra cred: squat nice rooftop, bonus if view of bay bridge) about 11 hours ago from web

eve11 sol: go2 dollar store, snag smiley face stickers (2nd best: rainbows, or rainbow hearts & stars), l8r traipse through fancy mall, & spread! about 15 hours ago from web

eve11 conjuring an orange grove spring to draw fresh water for my tea, well, that's what the moonlight spice white tea package nudges about 15 hours ago from web

eve11 Once" remind me of a momentary shooting star in the guise of busker that captured my heart, but so many genius artists do that, don't they? about 15 hours ago from web

eve11   went to dollar store to buy smiley stickers for (shhhh) submervise mission at Santana Row, and then went to see film "Once" about 15 hours ago from web

eve11 friend texts to ask if they called me E.V. pronounce eee-vee when I was little. no, my sisters called me (and stil do) eh-veh, breezy soft e about 15 hours ago from web

eve11   walkin to non-starbucks to hang out, good place to plot world overthrow by daisies and dryads and dolphins about 23 hours ago from web

eve11 sol: get out of vw bus & walk more, strum toes w/ the pulse of Mother Earth whether be muddy rain, tickling grass (uh, as in park greens) about 23 hours ago from web

eve11   @MarilynM: "enjoys work less than me", try moi! Abolish work, play: manifesto at http://tinyurl.com/ltu7 about 23 hours ago from web in reply to MarilynM

eve11   @evem: o that's glorious, twin! let the sunshine in! check out http://tinyurl.com/2aughv about 23 hours ago from web in reply to evem

eve11 sol:while hypnotize by lava lamp, wrap psy head round: yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds -ee cummings  about 23 hours ago from web

eve11 ala liveearth070707 twitters,gonna preface little ditties, little spontaneous Summer of Love tips with "sol", turn on,tune in, drop out 4 mo about 23 hours ago from web

eve11 off to sleep at godly hour of crack of dawn, i knew it was late when East Coast friends start textin (up Net surfing, read Ascension Magick) about 24 hours ago from web

eve11 phone line (+dsl) went kaput friday, took as omen to chill, be hermit for the weekend (silly friends say something about mercury retrograde)  03:38 AM June 18, 2007 from web

eve11   enough waking dreams, horizontal dreams await 09:51 PM June 14, 2007 from web

eve11 whew hot! end up chatting re knights in shining armor & prince charmings with housemate instead o spark fire in the park, tho cooler, go now 05:58 PM June 14, 2007 from web

eve11   heading out to rainbow park with journal and markers to plot the massive top secret anarchist World Tickling 04:37 PM June 14, 2007 from web

eve11 juneteenth vertigo thinking about all about to blossom this summer of love...expect artful shenanigans at my new pad near 24th&Folsom, SF 02:51 PM June 14, 2007 from web

eve11   sipping heated dewdrops w earl grey with bergamot & thinking of you 02:37 PM June 14, 2007 from web

Art: Misty River, by John Dolphin from Terrable Terragens (stunning photography of Terra Nova, the New Earth); Mandelbrot Galaxy by Vicky Brago-Mitchell (fractal art); Unveiling the Sorceress, by Timothy Lantz (fantasy art); Star Star, song by The Frames

mm, I get high with a little help from my friends

"Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread." - Pablo Neruda

A poetic soul plumbs the depths of realms seen and unseen. Some poets - perhaps the present day bards, ovates, druidesses - take the next leap, midwifery. Nurturing that pregnant moon into the birth of a luna piena by the sheer certainty, unwavering clarity of a waxing moon stitched into their belly and heart. (This sometimes goes by the name in law minded circles as the "law of attraction".)

Really, like Neruda says it comes from inner peace radiating outwards whether spilling towards words on paper, or knock on wood masterpieces of matter.

“Wishes are recollections coming from the future.” – Rainer Maria Rilke (hmmm, truer words have never been spoken as past-present-future collide into Now, as one takes a bird's eye view of Time)

So I may sprinkle some insights here and there throughout this Beyond "The Secret" series into the poetics of soul and matter since (so-called) miracles and joy magnetize in equal proportions to the clarity and bouyancy of your vision(s).

"Where there is no vision, the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18

Myself, my growth spurts along with my muses, my sacred mirrors, my soul friends. As I shared in previous post, this small cadre, circle, moai, supports each other. But more than anything we are quickening each other to greater and clearer heights through our overflowing love for each other and the world at large.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."  - Albert Einstein

I'd like to share some examples of how this poetic friendship can be most precious gift, particularly in a culture that has more TV sets than intimate friends.

Trust me, some of us have seen through our surrender to the Creatrix where This may all unfurled-unfurl-unfurling, and where we're headed jointly: the future quite luminous and numinous. Yet none lives in the future. We're blessed each and every moment by Presence, enveloped by, never necessitating, each other's presence.

Don't get me wrong, we still have our share of doubts and disasters, but we're there, and there for each other whilst vitally alive for every dip and lurch of the Roller Coaster.

So a friend texts me and asks what I'm up yesterday evening...

I am inhaling life and sunrays and dandelions, why?

If u breath deeply alday u get very high.

If u just allow sky to pervade thru the hollow body too

Turn ourselvs into fun nels.

[And with that entry-way, we start jamming... I'm sharing only a few snippets of the deep rush of fingers scurrying across quixotic keyboard at the park during sunset imbibing the silky wind, the awen...

"The smell of ink is intoxicating to me, others may have wine, but I have poetry." - Abbe Yeux-Verdi ]

Sacred vessel, musical instrument, and canvas for light and sound to splay splash painted rainbows and harpisodic fountains
Pure transparent diamond.
Floating swirling opalescent seamless boundariless mercurial bubbles of milky light
Pillars of sunlight heaven to earth to heaven
Liquid raindrops in pools of ocean whalesong reverberates
Rippling feathers beating rhythm of petals and juneteenth breezes
Enamored by silhouettes of flapping bird wings across sunset golds
Sometimes feels like magnolia sweeps down, bows and takes my hand to present its perfume right close to me
Ur a tree lover
Oh more flagrant than that...gaia lover...just lover lover

In an IM last week I learn another muse (recollections of a faun) shares my vision for the future of 'transportation' - and much more:

12:43 PM our true nature is without definition

 me: Mystery, unfathomable Mystery

12:44 PM faun: curiosity is thankfulness upons its own quest of questions

12:45 PM egad, wishing ever so recently to perfect the buddha body of perfect resource

 or in otherwords the imaginary sphere of self transportation

 me: curiousity is everything

 what do you mean?

faun: have you seen fantastic planet?

12:46 PM me: no

 faun: ninteen seventies french animated psychedelic film

 me: oh, sounds interesting, do they fly, bilocate

 faun: hmm

12:47 PM whilst meditating > light bodies translocate within floating spheres

 the world may be greener if so

 a wish of mine to escape the solitary confinement of the automobile

12:48 PM of course, flying is also enjoyable..

12:49 PM me: i was hinting at light bodies actually, and i think it's possible to shapeshift too into something more dense, then fly with dragonfly wings perhaps ;-) on a whimsical day that tis

12:50 PM faun: oh how the dragon fly inspires

 fine eyes

 me: taking a blurb I wrote a few months ago...This would be the year I'd have enough money to get that Bentley Azure. Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price: $329,990.

Now why on earth is it my heart's desire to have a Bentley Azure? Is it because the convertible evokes freedom and adventure and elegance and outrageous abundance? I totally respect its audacious boldness.

But own a car, no not really my heart's will.

The actual deepest depth of truth is this is for me: I am devoted to walking and wandering and roving and stumbling across hidden valleys and alleys and flowerpots and street corners and graffiti and flyers tacked onto light poles. I adore tumbling and racing downhill like a creek surrounded by fern covered hills and gurgling by cougars and coyotes and cactus and wild oats. I want to cavort in the nether realms with angels and faeries and tree spirits and wizards. I adore the deja vu of sitting next to strangers on trains and subways and busses. And to walk through walls, skate on water, bilocate and time travel and fly across the sky (with better aim than Icarus) and glide across galaxies and beam me up Scotty!

And no I'm not settling for a mere car anymore.

 oops, hit send early, that was blurb from a blog post... thougth it would be too out there if i mention light bodies

12:52 PM faun: beauty

 kids play in light

 my eye twinkles and skirts across the periphery

 is this happening?

12:53 PM two thousand seven

 this story is, nevertheles, will endlessly write, unveil.

12:54 PM enthusiasm & excitement

 sing

 me: singing and laughing is sufficient

 complete

 exuberance

12:55 PM faun: people ask why so often laughter is my expression, life is humorous

 me: divine comedy

 hindus call leela, gods at play

12:57 PM strange, not so strange, i feel your Presence right here

 faun: deities were present, switzerland, january 11th, 2006, 100th birthday of doc. albert hoffman

 you are simply smiling immortal light

 me: i know

12:58 PM who is dr hoffman?

 faun: discoverer of lsd, psychonaut nonetheless

12:59 PM me: ah, i was glancing - harder time reading of late - at book 2012: Return of Quetzalcoatl last night

 mention of ayahuasca, the church "santo daime" in brazilian amazon

 tho i've never done drugs, i'm trippy enough

1:00 PM faun: naturally the amazon beckons

 briefly researched certain tribes, mythology of the peruvian forests

1:01 PM telling of synaesthetic language (hear colors, etc.)

 me: hhhmmm, thought of peru too

 faun: vegetable plant goddess

 serpent like creation myth

1:02 PM me: i had a teacher in new orleans, she has had 'overlaps' (?) into 5D, she mentions more colors, maybe  80? too

1:03 PM faun: awe

 experienced spherical vision

 yet 5d is nonetheless a mystery
[edited out part of discussion here]

 faun: thinking to have read that in zen keys, a book by Thich Nhat Hanh

 me: now that i think of it, the people i met in nola that had 'bled' into 5d, all artists

1:10 PM faun: the source also of alex grey?

 me: what do you mean source?

 faun: good question

 perhaps a better word would be 'home'

1:11 PM me: oh, maybe, i just noting they were visual artists plus being energy workers yada yada

 faun: interesting

1:12 PM breathe, lifetimes within lifetimes, bookmarks, bridges, doors, breathe.

 me: my friend told me it was painting - the process of surrendering to - that 'helped' him awake

1:13 PM faun: reminds me of experimenting with written mantra, continuously writing the mantra until the words form image

1:14 PM me: hmm, never tried that, i don't consider myself visually gifted, but yet i see things in vision, and then try to use words to convey rather than paint

1:15 PM faun: in your elvish ways you an ever so gifted artist

1:16 PM color is

1:17 PM me: thank you...meant i have at least 1% chance of conveying beauty i've seen through words, almost none if i tried to paint/draw it, and yet nothing can really do it justice, it's that moment and it cannot be pinned down like butterfly cant

1:18 PM faun: free to be

 me: love color love all the senses i love touching flowers and bark

1:19 PM faun: let leaves tickle a skull walking beneath, love to sit lotus above roots

 muses whisper emotions disguised as words

1:22 PM me: ah, i was once mad at words for being so slippery and language separating from Reality yet now they are also fun to play with in sound and texture and turning it over like a mossy stone in your hand

1:25 PM faun: poetry loves subconscious..

 refreshing to think about water. and also the dreams which delved into a literary level not applicable to this abridged world

 remembering ..

 me: subconscious, call it The Well

1:26 PM a reservoir infinite

 faun: the attic

 library behind the revolving bookshelf, spiral staircase, descend into the philosophical dwelling & think about thinking

1:27 PM me: ha, interesting idea, last year when i sat down with tea & toast to write for 40 days, whoa, had no idea where that process would do to one

1:28 PM faun: si belle cette idée cette vie

 me: mostly wrote in my neighborhood, in my garden, the redwood grove (small consolation for living in surburbia) near

 faun: ascetic esoteric

 hocus pocus

 flowering lotus

1:29 PM me: hocus pocus hmmm

 i dwelled in the garden of Eden truly and

 faun: would you ever seek a vision quest?

 me: wherever the Song of Songs is written

 faun: you already have..

 me: and in Renaissance Italy

 and i went to all sorts of places i had no idea i already knew

1:30 PM seek a vision quest? hmm, it seems like an everyday occurence
[and more poetry unfurls...]

p.s. Just joined Twitter... Inviting ya into my Twitter twibe...mainly thinking to use with text messages more than online (too beautiful summer to be indoors on laptops)..so we can keep in touch with the spontaneous poetry weaving through our lives. Blessings, E

images Cosmic Ice Cream, by Gil Mellé (yum poetry in color); Dreamscape, at Keith's Fractal Images  (ethereal Otherworld fractal art); not sure who is the artist to thank for this scrumptious winged poetess, found via the enchantress via the delightful magick blog, Blogickal. Along with the art, came these musings from poet, Langston Hughes:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

postcapitalism muse-collaborators playing in concert

What would you think if I sang out of tune

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends -John Lennon and Paul McCartney

I'm focusing on being clear on my intentions today. So I shall be taking my magic markers and butcher paper and charting mind maps and creating havoc. 

You may wonder how in the heck I am surviving without visible means of income. Short answer: Oh I get by with a little help from my friends.

Somehow over time, and quite organically, a small circle of artistic friends (my family helps too) emerged. When one of us is strapped for cash, another has just sold a painting. We share.

I keep feeling this clarity of an art colony that keeps appearing like a mirage in the desert of my soul and it's not going to be be based on your typical transactional economy. It's a leap beyond even the most conscious of capitalists.

We see all types of law of attraction courses and gurus talk of attracting money. For me and I'm finding a few others, that system is obsolete. I'm creating something altogether different.

I tend to ask questions like, "If I was dropped (and hopefully not on my head) on a virgin planet with some friends, what would we create?" We are not beholden to laws and scriptures and traditional systems and the ruts of "this is the way things have always been done." A fresh slate. What then? What would we create?

I walk into a cafe yesterday in San Francisco after scouting for a room to rent. Absolutely no one peers up from their laptop. That type of silence doesn't hum like that palpable diamond Silence hush that animates life.

(Hu)Man as an island onto himself holds no appeal for me. So, when I think of Abundance, the qualities of unity, exuberance, friendship, mutual inspiration and community appear, rather than what my bank statement shows or what type of car is parked in front of my mansion.

"A live concert is exciting to me because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage." - Elvis Presley

These are just a few snippets from a few tales that have kindled my thoughts along these lines. They all underscore collaboration with other kindred souls working playing in concert. 

"With an average life expectancy of 78 years for men and 86 years for women, Okinawans are among the world's longest lived people. More important, elders living in this lush subtropical archipelago tend to enjoy years free from disabilities. Okinawans have a fifth the heart disease, a fourth the breast cancer, and a third less dementia than Americans, says Craig Wilcox of the Okinawa Centenarian Study.

What's key to their success? "Ikagai certainly helps," Wilcox offers. The word translates roughly to "that which makes one's life worth living." Older Okinawans, he says, possess a strong sense of purpose that may act as a buffer against stress and diseases such as hypertension. Many also belong to a Okinawan-style moai, a mutual support network that provides financial, emotional, and social help throughout life." - "Secrets of Long Life," National Geographic, November 2005 (via my post, "For Every Lynch Mob, There Are a Hundred Moais")

images Photo of spontaneous a.m. jamming at a cafe during the Cajun Zydeco Nights Festival in France; Eurydice, by Timothy Lantz (musing about music and sound a lot)