Crossroads Dispatches

urban fantasy alternate reality what if's breathing our world into being

"He believes in respecting forms already established for the novel. I believe in a form which is constantly mutating." - Anaïs Nin

Don't want to say too much more this minute. Let it unfold. But my semi-fictional character, Awen M. Currie, has a new blog, http://revelocean.blogspot.com. (Yes, nevermind linear storytelling, like most blogs it's reverse chronological which still isn't very sensical in a nonlinear reality.) And he's been twittering away at twitter.com/awen8.

I'm experimenting with new ways of playing What If. Visioneering.

"Your weakness is due to your conviction that you were born into the world. In reality the world is ever recreated in you and by you. See everything as emanating from the light which is the source of your own being." - Nisargadatta

The inspiration series was enlightening. The imagination series was fun. Yet there's something richer, more immersive about memoir and fiction that pulls you square and center into the picture in a way that self-helpy non-fiction and expository blog rants can't.

Check out World Without Oil (weekly story index here) if you've a few minutes. Rather than preaching and lecturing (yawn, if you ask me) on a post-carbon peak oil possible future, they've posed relevant scenarios.

You're asked to imagine this is happening. So you've just walked into this global storyline, suspending disbelief, how do you react? Discuss on the porch, over tea, at the water cooler, via blogs and phoned-in calls. Act as if. Live it. For instance, their Week 1 began:

Supply uncertainty drives prices higher    

"Fuel prices jumped this week, led by gasoline which gained over a dollar a gallon on average. Oil distributors pointed to several "renegotiated" delivery contracts as proof that a long-rumored shortfall in the supply of U.S. oil has finally arrived. Oil producers were tight-lipped about the adjusted contracts, and as I write this it's still unclear how extensive the shortfall will turn out to be."

Weave us into a possible future, let us picture ourselves in the middle of a plotline, rather than just spout out more statistics in a news item. I like.

"If we see it from the scientific, intellectual point of view, we see it as almost impossible. If we see it from a magic point of view, we can feel that yes, we can make a difference." - Mayan priest Gerardo Barrios Kaanek

p.s. Jane McGonigal is one of the creators of World Without Oil.

(Psssst, it's no secret, I'm a utopian.) Thus what-if possible futures I'll throw out look radically different. I'm a believer in: Whatever we can conceive of, we can build. Although, the challenge is our collective imagination muscles have been weakened by centuries of defeatism, centuries of utter rationality. Build it, and they will come.

Art I just finished reading The Magician's Nephew, and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Tres immersive storytelling. Dreaming of Narnia, by Sarah Carter. What I'd like to call the Wood Between the Worlds, photo via Tamo-Do: The Academy of Sound Healing, Color Therapy and Chi Movement. ("You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. When he tried to describe it afterward Digory always said, "It was a rich place: as rich as plumcake." - The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis)

you will be coming into a fortune

"You will be coming into a fortune." - fortune cookie 7/30/07 from restaurant on Mission near 25th St, San Francisco   

You will be coming into a for tune.

For tune: what we speak reverberates in resonance with the frequencies of aether spun using nearly invisible light-threads striated into a tapestry of matter.

What we speak matters. Matters. Matter. What matters to us is alive in our every waking thought, vibrating wavelets, imprinting in matter.
 
What are you singing? What's your refrain? Who's in your choir?

crystal did you know: abracadabra is derived from the Aramaic word meaning "I create as I speak."   10:43 PM August 21, 2007 from web

I started reading The Chronicles of Narnia recently myself since as a small boy, Awen (twitter.com/awen8), a semi-fictional yet quite real character, was fascinated by the otherworlds that these children travelled to. It was an influential book in his young life, and perhaps the clearest murmurings of the beginnings of his musical, magical life.

"All this time the Lion's song, and his stately prowl, to and fro, backward and forward, was going on. What was rather alarming was that at each turn he came a little nearer. Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) "out of the Lion's head." When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked round you, you saw them. This was so exciting that she had no time to be afraid." - The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis (1st book chronologically in The Chronicles of Narnia series)

There are passages in William Irwin Thompson's visionary handbook for the future, Darkness and Scattered Light, that I've read and re-read and re-read. (And I hardly can read any longer. Alas for this once adoring booklover, most books lack requisite juiciness and zest.) This is one of them:

"Perhaps the best way for me to describe the re-creation of the past in the future is to follow Plato's example again to tell "a likely story."

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there were two brothers. One was big and strong and highly respected as a great warrior; the other was looked upon with scorn, for he was soft, gentle, and effeminately given to lying among the flowers to play his flute as he gazed at the sky. A time came when the town of the brothers set about the work of constructing a great temple to honor their gods. Since the oldest brother was the largest and strongest man in the community, the elders asked him to move the huge stones needed to make a truly holy temple, after the fashion of the ancients. The older brother responded with muscle, but he could not move even the smallest of the large rocks the priests wanted. So then in good warrior fashion, he set about organizing the conquered slaves in work gangs; but no matter how hard he beat them with the whip, the slaves could not budge the stones. While the slaves and the older brother were struggling with great effort, the younger brother came strolling in from his morning with the flowers and the sky. He looked at the people and the stones, and then he looked into the stones and recognized them, for he could see their names. With a smile he took out his flute and began to play. The older brother shouted that that there was real work for real men to do, but his shouts were stopped by an exclamation from the slaves, for the great stones were beginning to sway back and forth in rhythm to the music of the younger brother's flute. Stopping for a moment, the younger brother told the priests that they should speak to the stones and tell them that they were being moved to make a great temple to honor the gods. And when the priests had done this, the young brother told the slaves to take the stones gently by the hand, for they were very, very old, and lead them along the path to the site of the temple. And then he began to play his flute again. The stones began to sway back and forth; and as they did, the slaves gently guided them and the great stones danced themselves down the road into the place the priests had chosen for them.

Contained in this variation on an old legend is a racial memory of a lost technology... All our legends of magic and wizards are simply memories of the days of this lost sacred science. From the point of view of this ancient knowledge, matter was alive and was singing; if you knew its key signature cabbalistically, you could vibrate in resonance with it, and dance the rocks into place." - William Irwin Thompson

p.s. If ever there was a tune toon town, it's New Orleans. "this whole city throbs 2 the sound of musica, even in july." - text from Nola friend in July 

Art Spiritual e-Art by Maia; when I meditate with any artwork from the spiritmythos.org site (all available as prints and screensavers), my poetry is otherwordly, or more accurately, I'm attuned to my highest dimensional self and words dance themselves into perfect placing like stones fitted for a temple. (These poems are secreted away in an anonymous, public website - email if you're interested in checking out.)

I'm well aware that Maia's work is thoroughly copyrighted, yet I just saw the bumper sticker (clearly a sign from the blue-white starlings), "When in doubt, share."

Damanhur temple. A very real underground place. Go, should you ever be within a thousand miles of the vicinity of Turin, Italy. I spent seventeen or so idyllic, life-altering days there one fantastical August.

genesis of alternate realities

I want to set the record right. When Niall MacMhuirich died in 1726, the bardic order did not become extinct in Scotland. Oh, sure their presence were no longer needed at Court. And maybe thereabouts is whence the term "singing for your supper" came into being. What a fall from the heights of paradise for bards!

Yet the tradition has always continued backwards and forwards in time.

So maybe that's when and where Awen Mihir Currie comes into this picture, or more accurrately the frame (the picture's much Bigger) I call my life.

Not too many blue moons ago, I replied back to a friend that now feels more like an online avatar since we haven't seen each other in this dimension in a very long time:

there are many that roam the earth
in these epic times

we are the Stars of the epic
I started to write a [10-minute] play with you as
my inspiration called "Where Angels Fear to Tread"
and then I quit writing because I realized
I might write the future into existence
something felt true about it
I'd fast-forwarded to time maybe 2011
and your character collaborating with dolphins & whale

to record their song
for a musical score or something like that
& then you started to understand their tonal
language because it is like singing and star languages
and they warned you about a quake
to come in bay area, and we do have time to warn people

just before the quake
there is a superconductivity like after a crop
circle, and there is an information charge, magnetic?
i quit writing, too true

epic times

and we both have a flair for the
dramatic
(look at your life, stuff of movie
script, no?)

these are going to be epic times, the reason
you were born on this plane at this time
is upon you - the pressure you feel is like
the pressure you felt in the birth canal before
you came into this world, something wants
to be born, allow your destiny

many angels roam the earth at this time,
but not all of them, appear as you'd
imagine

few do,
myself am muse-magician-mystery
more sorceress than saint
past lives include temple prostitute,
courtesan,
whore
too - not all self-aggrandizing holy angelic
tho truth is Every blooming thing holy

i found my peoples in nola
gypsies & Geminis
time travellers & tinkerers
wizards & wandering bards
carny kid & crystalline child
dakinis & dragons

when my Powers [not 'mine' or anyone's; omnipotence ] started growing
i would magnetize my thoughts accidentally

magnetism & creativity go hand and hand
electricity too
planets and Sun increasing in both fields
tho physics NOT my subject nevermind that I
have electrical engineering diploma -
i kinetically feel this

anyhow, i would magnetize thoughts into
reality
so that if i was feeling guilty bout anything
whatsoever, unrelated too, or
even not having an up-to-date registration
on my car, I guarantee you I would be
pulled over by a police officer
over & over & over in the same week
UNBELIEVABLE
different officers - finally started dawning
on me that something was up
(i gave up driving too, as wanderers and wonderers
are wont to do eventually)

your Creative powers trump mine, I suspect

they are there for a reason O musician-magician

nothing to worry about, plenty to glory about

your friend at your service whenever wherever,
e

You may ask if Awen is real. I have a different sense of reality than the average person. So does my clan.

Yet even in the flesh, they still don't exist to most people.

Invisible.

They are not represented in The New York Times, Vogue magazine, or even Live Journal. A lot of them when seen, seem as drifters and dilettantes. Surface appearances.

Awen is an ambassador of sorts for these clanfolk. A composite character of my soul family. I'm the bridger of the bunch. One foot precariously perched in both worlds.

Why Awen came online when he did he shall reveal soon enough. There is a little bit of urgency. You see August 28th is a lunar eclipse. September 11th a solar eclipse. And September 14th...but I'm getting ahead of myself. He's still fleshing out online. Twitter is easiest for him to update - twitter.com/awen8. And since all stories happen in turning point moments, it may connect you more intimately with the day to day.

You definitely should check the Twitter "with friends" too. Everything happens in the mirror of relations, after all.

The blog (as is) isn't going to work. Tumblr's great for someone that's hypercreative (used to be diagnosed as a disorder called A.D.H.D. back in 2007; can you imagine!?), but ughhh! it really needs comments. So Awen's is yet another abandoned blog. (Maybe I'll let him piggyback on my Typepad Pro account?)

The MySpace page, myspace.com/revelocean, for his sound (band doesn't quite capture) is just a start. There he says:

A friend told me that you don't "exist" until you have an online identity. Well, I don't really believe that as I meet plenty of peeps that are off the radar so to speak. I see them at the BART station, pushing a cart of jangling cans and clinking bottles, watching the whales off the coast, squatting at the top of city hills and abandoned warehouses, and travelling the highways and biways of this fine country. We exist all right.

p.s. Some would want to characterize this genre of play. Genre of writing. Maybe chaotic fiction? Alternate Reality Game? (Recommend checking out World Without Oil for another example.)

Wink: Hmmmm, how about Alchemical Reality Game?

Art Yoshitaka Amano's Iris; many bards were seers, fortune-telling nomads as child too... Yoshitaka Amano's "Miraishi-tachi" - The Future Foreseeing; Awen looks a little like Yoshitaka Amano's Lord of Dreams.

Bonus: A beautiful thumbnail gallery of Yoshitaka Amano's work here. I adore his Fairies art book.

fire the grid, making love to your beast as every footfall is your own

I awoke at precisely 4:11 a.m this morning from a nightmare.

All I remember now hours later was there was a beast in it. And I was none too sure the beast was my ally. Though knowing all too well of Jungian shadow work, I'm pretty sure the Beast represents beloved, though shoved away into a deep dark corner, aspects of my own self.

Being an outlier in the New Age community (I'm a skeptic; while I'm open to new information, ultimately rely on my own direct experience and knowing which places me at odds with said 'community' much of time), I'd heard of the Fire The Grid global meditation scheduled for 11:11 a.m. Greenwich time, July 17, 2007.

Which would be exactly 4:11 a.m. Pacific time for me.

I had vacillated whether I was going to participate or not. My own gut instincts told me that this particular channeller's message wasn't resonating for me; although the personal story of her son's recovery from a near-fatal accident emphatically did. That story rang truer than many things I've read in ages.

The rest of the site, I picked up sensations of fear and worry from the material which I don't share about the fate of the planet. The visions I have sensed of the future are so startingly palpably real and beatific they're so much harder to swallow (you ought not because I say so; inquire for yourself) than scenes and memes of doomsday and annihilation we're accustomed to.

Also I didn't sense that anything of significance galactically was happening on July 17th. (July 8th, however, was a different story.)

As the weeks went by, the Fire the Grid meme spread like wildfire. (Someone was doing their marketing homework.) The more websites that referenced Fire The Grid, and the more email I got from newsletters I'm subscribed to and from well-intentioned individuals endorsing the global meditation, the more and more I began to doubt my own (conflicting) instinct.

Who am I to know for myself, eh? Memes know better, right? Memes are gospel, silly. (Have you ever noticed meme screams me, me?)

So last night I was still vacillating whether I would participate at 4:11 a.m. Although weeks earlier I'd been certain I was not. My own personal decision. I wasn't going to tell anyone else whether they ought to or not.

Finally, around midnight, I decided that I was not going to do it, although, this nagging doubt accompanied me to my slumber. As usual, I prayed to my higher self to show me what I didn't know I didn't know as I lay down.

In the move to San Francisco, I ended up giving a lot of philosophy, spiritual and business books away. I realized I am never going to crack many of them open. I want to rely more and more on my own innate instincts, intelligence, power and love to guide.

I'm not sure when we became a self-help society, but the signs are everywhere that this is so. It's intricately tied up with celebrity and expert worship too. Constantly continuously giving our own power away.

There's a part of me feels like maybe the best thing I can do is close the curtain on this blog and simply remind you that you have access to everything you ever need to know

...in the moment you need to know it. Trust your holy self.

That said, there are reasons to share. There are reasons to read. Sometimes it's all a game we're playing in a house of mirrors.

Once I sent the beginning of a poem I was writing to a friend. This is how it started, and then I got snagged not knowing what was next:

if said angel wandered the earth
she gallavanting mistletoe in a sphere of lapis

There was a little more in the email about nebulas and nurseries where stars are born, and he writes back (and this is someone that has had more than his fair share of beastly experiences):

I've found the worst turns to the best because contrast is all really see

live it be humble enough to see it and then tell it in your own words........

glory be to the one ones who know that every footfall is their own

Those words sum up the motivation I have to continue to write - and share. Tell it in your own words: poetry - not gospel.

And so when another friend texting with me this morning says: i love my nightmares... Wonder what it b like 2 make love 2 ur beast?

I understood. And I understood why I rolled over in the crisp covers, and simply went back to sleep at 4:11 a.m.

Bonus: One of the most sane responses to the Fire The Grid meditation I'd read. Stumbled upon at midnight last night when I just meant to read more David Wilcock. Snippet below:

"[W]e feel the key is not in group meditations, but rather in an ongoing practice. The Law of One philosophy only ever gave two techniques that create an ‘exponential increase’ in your spiritual growth in a short time:

1. Seek the love in this moment.
2. Reflect on issues from your past that inform this moment.

Each additional seeking of love in the moment creates an exponential increase. Each additional issue from your past you can bring up and examine for its relevance to this moment creates an exponential increase. 

The world is healed by our own diligent effort in healing ourselves, day by day, consistently. - "Should I Meditate on July 17th?", David Wilcock, Divine Cosmos blog

images Fallen Angel, by Olivia de Berardinis (hmmm, embracing our fallen angel self is making love to the beast, perhaps); Girl Before a Mirror, by Pablo Picasso

777: the religion of money, or, the river of life

"I have been thinking about balance of the four elements. I am wondering - your life as you describe it in your posts seems to emphasize the air (freedom) and fire (passion) aspects. Are you in touch with your 'roots' (earth element)? Obviously the material aspects of your existence is not significant any more (unimportant?). But where is your basis?" - a reader

I don't know when it happened. When I realized I didn't need a priest to talk to God. When I realized I did not need a guru to come to the Self that's always been.

I just can't recall when I realized there is a direct immediate 24/7 envelopement with Source. Sometimes I may quote April 7, 2006 as a date. Peet's Coffee as a place. But really, when we're not deceiving ourselves, when were we not enlightened?

Do we really need a hierarchy of religion and libraries of special and often esoteric texts to tell us: Be still and know that I am God? Not really. Simply be completely still without any holding onto any of your concepts of God, or you, or me. Come empty, and you will know fullness.

The river of our life is connected to an eternally spring-fed source.

So current I can comprehend.

Currency feels also like another one of those intermediaries. It's still an exploration for me, but.... I want to touch earthy Mother, Mater, matter with my own hands, bake bread with my own hearth without the priestly caste of money to mediate on my behalf. (You may think I live on some other universe; not really, I've just seen into a probable universe.)

I for one am certainly no renunciate, no ascetic. Been there, done that. (I detest the word "sustainable": reeks of scarcity, not the fecundity of nature.)

I'm more of a tantrika, an aesthetic. When I'm honest, I can't say I have any compelling desire to create yards and mountains of crinkly khaki-hued paper strips and metallic disks. Rather I'd create me temples of glittery gold and lapus lazuli tiles, pyramids of rainbowed light, oases of frankincense and shifting shimmering sands and palms and cerulean blue lakes.

I'm a creatrix at heart. I want to go to the heart of the matter. No middlemen, please.

Yesterday, I twittered: Imagine a world where money is extraneous. So we print beatific money as art. Period.

On 07-07-07 there are worldwide concerts being held called "Live Earth." Live Earth: beautiful. Right on the money! Yep, She truly is truly alive.

Yet drowning in a collective, collected (stagnated), sea of doubt - that's not befitting to a grand Creatrix such as She, such as me.

I know where that doubt comes from. I've touched it too. We cannot believe we're really in the channel of the river. When we look around it seems like we must be going upstream because the so-called "mainstream" is going somewhere that other direction.

as seen spraypainted in street outside my house: CONFORM. Hmmm, not very likely. - July 1, 2007 twitter

Does the truth need a defense team? Do we doubt so much that we're really are on track with truth, and our God Self, that we run to others to give ourselves over to us?

"I want to point out here that if the answer is right, it does not need pressure to gain acceptance. The truth has enough presence to be recognized by any that have experience enough to recognize it. Those that have not recognized something that others feel is the truth need to be free to seek the truth in their own way." - Ceann DeRohan, Right Use of Will

So on 07-07-07, in addition to throwing your juice bottle in the recycled bin, consider a willingness to believe in Life....consider a willingness to believe in grace.

Believe that limitless miracles are the natural course of the river.

Believe in yourself.

Let's take the dam we've built down and let Her flow.

p.s. Inspiration for printing my own money from NPR (via Marilyn) and The Diggers. (You'll have to connect dots.) I'm through with the starving artist archetype, are you? Artists are some of the boldest Creatrixes on Gaia.

But you're not inspired by what the U.S. Mint spews out either, eh? Well, check out Eve's one-dollar bill. (We're all going to curate something...stay tuned.)

Bonus: Snippet of the 07-07-07 message on Gillian MacBeth-Louthan "The Quantum Awakening" site:

The choices of the last two years brought you fully into the land of I  DO BELIEVE or the SEA OF DOUBT. Do you believe or do you doubt?

In the next days you will be given a choice -€“ do you believe 100% that you are aligned with what is light, what is Christed, what is good about man, about God, about Life.

You will have to dig deep into this haystack to find the needle that represents the goodness in this time and place. You must become a living blessing to all those that cross your path, to give to them a great new hope for the day.

Do you realize that throughout your day everything you do affects another and as an emissary of light. Ask to be a blessing for everything and everyone from the morning to night. It is by doing this that you will amplify the wattage of creation and put it in into a place that will solidify.

...A clarion call has come forth and asked you to reconfirm your vows with the light, with what is divine, with the future of planet Earth in a place of peace. So many of you have given up on your freedom, on your heart'€™s desires, on what brings you joy that the 100th monkey of doubt has shifted the entire equation of ight and dark. We ask you to dig in your heels (and they are winged heels) as of late and to believe not just for yourself, not just for your planet and your people but for all that exists that depends on the outcome of earth'€™s ascension or dissension.  And this we leave you as a thought in your heart. - Gillian MacBeth-Louthan

Art Credits: Persepolis, by Michael Parkes; Golden Serpent , by Michael Parkes; Drowning, Peacefully, by Solkeera (reminds me too of end of Piscean Age, beginning of Aquarius...); The Riddle, by Michael Parkes (just discovered Michael Parkes via image search for "oasis" - simply adore his work! Love to see his printed money.)

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."

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

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)

the poets law of attraction & caustic burning rainbow souls twinkling stars whalesong

"Caustic" a friend's subject line reads the other day.

Text message from another friend this a.m.: "Can u feel it. hav alot of fire in venus these days and for years to come.can ya handl it."

Reply: "complete consummation..let the fire consume me...what remains is the only real me"

Easier said.

I steer clear of most folks right now because this Kali energy feels too fierce and fiery. (Are newborn dragons and infant feathered serpents cordoned off because they might accidently singe someone?)

One day mesmerized enchanted spellbound by a rotating milky way orb of multi-dimensional geometric luminosity coming to vibrant vibration writhing before my eyes, I felt an inferno arising inside. My face was ablaze, the heat unearthly, uncontrollable, and I nearly blacked out.

"Congratulations," the instructor said when I told him later why I had had to sit down during the ceremony. "That's kundalini. Prana. You got it."

Though I'd been taught to be kind, and tolerant,  somewhere in my youth I crossed over to people-pleasing pushover. However, lately, any and everything confining, binding, or tying elicits a zero-tolerance roar: "Get those chains off me at once!"

I've always been an exclusive devotee of the Air elementals - of winged messengers and the sword of intellect and the twinkle of wind chimes and so too the hum of words in poetry and cloud - caring naught for (and giving a wide berth to) the seering flames of Fire. Though I have a feeling before She is through with me, I will have embraced each and every one of the elements - and then some.

"There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish." - John Keats

On my birthday weekend, I had the fortune to meet a complete stranger (whom happened to live on 22 something Cinderella Avenue) as I was fishing for dollars to buy a Caltrain ticket to San Francisco. He sold me his already used day pass for $3.

We got to talking while waiting for my train and he asked if he could keep hanging out with me on the train ride into SF. I made it clear that as soon as I arrived in SF, I had plans with a friend, but that the train ride would be fine to continue our conversation. To make a long story short, in that hour plus interval into the city, he somehow managed to convince himself that this was love at first sight, and I somehow spent the entire ride explaining the concept of platonic friendship while lifting his groping hands off me. When we arrived in the city, amidst the grey skies and grey skyscapers, he enthusiastically described how I could blow off my friend, we'd go dancing at a street festival on Market and some other intersection, then go out to eat, and ...

I don't recall my exact words. I unleashed a torrent about it being my birthday, and how I am in charge of my own birthday plans, and that I had no intention of blowing off my friend, and I walked off with him standing on the corner with mouth gaping open.

I wished I'd handled it with the aplomb befitting a priestess-poet - and I felt strange for the next half hour turning over the mossy stone of mind wondering if I was wrong yet curiously not feeling wrong. There was a sense of personal dominion and freedom over my own life and the courage to stand up for it that is becoming a new way of being.

There might have been a time I'd compromise, and do the spiritual lovey "be nice" thing and suggest he come over to meet my friend, and maybe the three of us could hang out.

Why compromise? I was through, and that was that.

"There is no failure in being human. It does not matter if you waste your life, or you use your life appropriately, Whatever you are choosing to do is just fine. There are no mistakes, there are no failures. There is nothing you can do wrong. The essences of wrong was given to you as a limitation; as was the frequency of death to limit you and bind you in fear. In the Orient they bind the feet. In some cultures they bind the head, in others they bind the heart. Cut away all things that bind you and  no longer serve you." - Gillian MacBeth-Louthan

There were no barbs accompanying this No. It was a clean No that Eckhart Tolle describes, yet it had more bit more fury to it than I'd have liked - like a storm surge behind a levee breaks apart in a fury - because I'd held back too long and played agreeable through the entire train ride.

I've never said No as often as I have this 2007.

These are times we shall be saying a lot of No's. There is always a committed Yes embedded around any No if you look closely. Saying No here, deepens the Yes elsewhere. It's part and parcel of the sorting process, the laser focus process, going on: Yes, No, No, No, No, No, No, Yes, No, Yes.

Caustic, an overloaded word, a slew of negative connotations. I sense my soul friend and I are feeling our newfound personal power spilling over into misunderstandings. We both tend toward trying to be nice (read: pushover). So secretly I actually applaud his pushback.

I sense we are communicating with the codes, signs and symbols of the times.

Maybe it was spying the incarnated fire elemental scurrying away from the dance studio a week ago that gave me pause. What am I afraid of? She is purifying innocence. Her pink and crimson sequin blushes across thigh-high dress sparkles revealing her long lean twigs of kindling, burnt straw hair tied up in tinsel sparks of fireworks.

Caustic, from Greek kaustikos, from kaustos, from kaiein, kau-, to burn.

The surface fire blazes away the rotting brush and makes way for an opening in the forest canopy. New baby sproutings unfurling buds can now drink and sup on liquid sunshine pouring into their chalice.

The forest mystery cloaks herself with regal giant sequoia, lodgepole pine, and jack pine. Conifer pinecones yearn for the extreme heat of brush fire to be released from cone itself and germinate and burst free into multiplication.

Though we wonder to ourselves fervently as this fire rages. The intensity and the fury. Will it consume the forest entire?

Sometimes, I know without a doubt, that this Fire is entirely alike the one that swirled through Moses' burning bush. That bush burned aright, yet did not burn up. The dross merely torched away in the crucible of freedom and love.

"Piano as an orchestra of sound waterfalling through "Tea for Two" changes, with the skeleton of the melody baring its trivia from moment to moment. I listened to it again and again, trying to grasp the difference between the song line and what [Bud] Powell was doing to it. Melody versus improvisation; what someone else had written versus what Powell was doing to and with it. Somehow an idea vaguely made its way through: you don't have to play somebody else's melody - you can improvise (how?), you make up your own tune! WOW - really? You mean, I don't have to repeat my parents? I don't have to 'play their melody' for the rest of my life?" - "Eight Fire Sources", by Clayton Eshleman, Poetry Flash, Fall 2006

Caustic...

"A single ray of light has a pathetic repertoire, limited to bending and bouncing (into water, glass or air, and from mirrors). But when rays are put together into a family - sunlight, for example - the possibilities get dramatically richer. This is because a family of rays has the holistic property, not inherent in any individual ray, that it can be focused so as to concentrate on caustic lines and surfaces. Caustics are the brightest places in an optical field. They are the singularities of geometrical optics. The most familiar caustic is the rainbow, a grossly distorted image of the Sun in the form of a giant arc in the skyspace of directions, formed by the angular focusing of sunlight that has been twice refracted and once reflected in raindrops." - Rene Descartes

Yes, I'm into social art of creating a new civilization. An art colony. A rainbow society. The time of the lone wolf is behind me. My soul kin, the soul team magnetizes me, as I them. It is our overlapping passions and overlapping waves that galvanize us, that bring us to each other.

"[S]oul groups will now be coming together in a way that reflects an overlap of similar purpose in regard to creating the New Earth... All aspects that relate to the blueprint of what we have chosen to make the reality of the New Planet Earth, will then come together to create it as a team. We cannot do it on our own! These overlaps [of passion] will create some very incredible teams indeed.

...When we clash with another, many times it is only because their specific purpose is not the same as ours. That person belongs to another team.

...Because of this phenomenon of higher vibrating energy creating a refining process and a separation of sorts, we can also experience sudden separations from those whom we felt were so very close to us. We simply have differing roles now in regard to purpose. Until we reached critical mass in August of 2005 and then more highly vibrating new energies arrived in July of 2006, the purpose of lightworkers was in raising the consciousness and vibration of the planet. After this was accomplished, resulting in reaching a specific vibrational level, lightworkers would then be ready to begin the process of creating the New World.

New connections would begin to become evident in the fall (season) of 2006, as these new connections would be paramount for the beginning of these new teams of similar purpose." - Karen Bishop, Staying In Alignment, from excerpt of chapter, "With Others"

Caustic...alsooooooo gravitating wavy waviness

Caustic I  by Eric Heller, 2001, 32" x 45",  LightJet print

"Caustics are places where things accumulate; here light is accumulating in characteristic shapes on a sea bottom, after being refracted by two consecutive wavy surfaces. This image was inspired by our study of propagation of waves through random media, which affects everything from twinkling of stars to whale communication."

"The poet's role is to tell of things that might happen, things that are possible. Aristotle adds that the poet may imitate life not as it is, but as it ought to be." - Fashion diva Vivienne Westwood's manifesto, "Active Resistance to Propaganda"

This is this poet's Law of Attraction: The unseen language, the green language of glyphs and motion, communicates impulses through waves of vibration inextricably intimately intricately inexplicably simultaneously in explosions of dimensions seen and unseen of sound and light.

when u type i see lots of musical notes flyn off ur typing machine - friend, and seer from other coast, in text message

I believe in the beginning, there was only sound. Pulses of light next. And Tesla centuries before his time. Souls re-sound, resonate, and accumulate bouncing with like-hearted mates. Spelunking together into the cave of the Heart. (Yes Virginia every vibrating being has soul: that slab of stone to this keyboard too.)

"You can have some amazing hallucinogenic experiences doing nothing but looking out your window. There is also the summer, when it gets hot and sticky and the air is very metallic. There is a lot of Indian spirit. The earth there is unusual, filled with ore. So there is something happening that is hard to define. There is a magnetic attraction there." - Bob Dylan, 1978 Playboy interview

Caustic...a word woven in our minds with corrosion. Yes, my own education lept me into the association caustic = corrosive, deterioration, rust (rainbows and water waves were secondary growth planted after the fire burnt through the debris of my mind). My alchemical soul purified, I imbibed the multidimensional nature of caustic:

"The materials most resistant to corrosion are those for which corrosion is thermodynamically unfavorable. Any corrosion products of gold or platinum tend to decompose spontaneously into pure metal, which is why these elements can be found in metallic form on Earth, and is a large part of their intrinsic value. More common "base" metals can only be protected by more temporary means." - Wikipedia on corrosion

And so be it if should I be a caustic agent in this last turn of this age of iron, the Kali Yuga, as the wheel spirals into its next cycle, for I know we are pure gold - pay no mind to all the dross.

Humans don't rust. Baser metal will not survive the intensity of the burning, yet the underlying gold will shine, fiercely radiant.

Just the other day, before head gyrates to horizontal dreams, I write this Alchemist's Prayer. I am not always 100 percent certain that my intentions, desires, and Will are in alignment with the Whole. So I state my wish, adding:

If my intentions are not of the Highest, please transmute them for the Whole. That is what I am here for: the complete transmutation of our basest desires into the very finest Gold of All.

Namaste, golden beings.

UPDATE: "Melt into water. levitate in air. consummed by fire. I think love braids all three yearnings to surrender, let go." - me, in text message to friend last night

June 12th, I had an extraordinary occurence that brought this story into the realms of karmic and soul healing. I drew the Adjustment, or Justice Tarot card yesterday (pops up frequently... again today for instance). It's been a card that baffles me. Yesterday it dawned on me that it represents the harmonious symphony of wisdom, love, and power; of air, water, fire in an elemental sense; or the triune of crown, heart and solar plexus chakras in terms of the body temple. The dance is being all three at once and attuned to the drumbeat of the Earth. Too much fire can be caustic, can hurt; too little and our passion and will whimper down to charred remains. Anyhow, it's quite a story and worth it's own post.

The golden age is the embodiment of our higher selvs.ful on.all the time. u ready. - friend's text message this a.m.

Bonus: By the way, Earth elementals and other devas are known as The Shining Ones by the ancients. This excerpt below from The Path of the Priestess: A Guidebook for Awakening the Divine Feminine, by Sharron Rose, sheds a little remembrance into one Golden Age and the one we're evolving into (hmmm, odd to write it that way, as if time was linear rather than stacked simultaneous into a symphony of eternal Now).

images Untitled (How to Make a Rainbow), Joseph Cornell (my guess is it's this Joseph Cornell) via Dust Congress; Rainbow Serpent, by Brad at Nowa Nowa Primary School in southeastern Australia; Earth and Sky, by Vicky Brago-Mitchell; Rainbow Mountain, by Vicky Brago-Mitchell (yes, you must check out Vicky's entrancing fractal art) Caustic I, by Eric Heller

summer of love 2007

"We were becoming world citizens. Peace and love weren't just slogans but states of mind and experiences that we were living and bearing witness to. Living in harmony with the earth was an ideal that we felt and perceived as real experience. We were bringing forth a second Renaissance that would change human culture." - Allen Cohen, co-founder of the underground paper San Francisco Oracle, essay "Summer of Love"

Everytime I go out for an late afternoon visit with the sun and the clouds and the morning doves and the redwood grove and the children gleeing at Rainbow Park, I return flooded with a clarity of information download(s) and renewed vitality... a rush!

Dusk last night, texting a co-inspirator: "summer of love 1967. haight-asbury. 40 years the children wander Egypt. beatles all you need is love, 62567=9. 62507=22. umm yum summer of love in fruition 2007"

"Performing at the height of the Vietnam War, the group [The Beatles] wanted to spread a message of peace and love to the world. They broadcast a live set, at 8:54 p.m. GMT [on June 25, 1967], singing John Lennon's song, "All You Need Is Love", which had been written especially for the occasion. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon and Graham Nash, among others, showed up and sang along. The performance was done after a single rehearsal." - Wikipedia on first worldwide satellite broadcast, Our World

It's summer... have you looked! Nature's display is shamelessly fecund and prodigious. The magnolias buttery sweet. Petals the size of my palm open in an untethered gliding sliding slurring surrender off the edge of the satin ivory sheets bedpost. Any minute she may float like an orchestra note landing face to face with Gaia's cheek.

Summer. A time of expansion. Love is definitely sowing its seeds like dandelion weeds. People say I seem to be in love.

Love is in the air
In the whisper of the trees
Love is in the air
In the thunder of the sea - John Paul Young

People say I seem to be in love. Yet they say this as if I am in love with. If they only knew!

On Valentine's Day I wrote in my Zaadz blog (ah, so many blogs, so little time):

I was flipping through WeAr magazine (adore it, if you're into global fashion/ retail/ art you might get a kick out of this large-format Berlin mag) when I came across a layout of Richard Kidd store in Vancouver.

Under glass skylights and the criss-cross steel beams of chic industrial bohemia, a wall mural reads:

I CAN NEVER BE IN LOVE

BECAUSE I AM LOVE

Profound poetry appears in the most unexpected places. Love letters to an unspeakable God ditto.

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” - Sir Winston Churchill

p.s. I love that tagline in the image: "It was the end of believing…”

(and, the beginning of being)

"Someday, after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire." - Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The foundation for the law of attraction is the law of love. How can one be immersed in abundance and be divorced from its prima mater, the animating spiral of Love? I was pleasantly blessed with I stumbled across Standing Elk's website recently "by accident" and was stunned by the clarity of its wisdom. He writes simply, eloquently, about each of the universal laws. On the Universal Law of Love he begins: "This is the Greatest Law of them all. This is just my opinion here, I would want you to know that, but it is an even higher law than the Law of Free Will. For that is what all creation is, is based in Love..."

"I do not say that you cannot learn to materialize every wish of your being - and this aspect of alchemy is for some the easiest part of the whole, while for others it remains the most difficult. I do say that the design of those wishes ought to be contemplated more than the wondrous science of bringing them into manifestation from the invisible. For to create a worthy design is a most noble endeavor, worthy of the God in man, which alone can set him free to fulfill his immortal destiny." - Saint Germaine (aka Merlin)

I believe the hippies were aiming for an unfurling Renaissance that summer of love, 1967. I believe they were planting the seeds for something that would require an exodus through the desert of our collective and personal dark night, the moist black soil, through the Abyss, to come to fruition.

I'm not into nostaglia though, nor slumbering back in the past. History is intriguing in it reveals the seeds. I'm simply thrilled we'll be around to see the harvest.

Sex, now Eros coursing through all the chakras, everything is erotic, well beyond sense of self or Other, co-mingling light bodies Drugs, now simply letting go of control, opening to the inner planes of reality, space, light, Life.  Rock 'n roll, now singing our signatory soul notes, attunement, oui, "All I need is the air that I breathe" music music everywhere too, in harmony with water, earth, fire, air, aether, stardust, the music of the seven spheres.

new soul kin's email: once in [a lovely country] friends walked along hilltops, alternations of voices reading a new earth by e. tolle, a rennaissance of consciousness, observing the day moon rise into blue sky.

my reply: my renaissance in consciousness, reading prajnaparamitra sutra, or maybe it was just the tea at Peet's went down the wrong pipe ;-)

This, the Season of Renaissance. Now, the Summer for the Art-Happening called Awakening. As Paul Levy says, "For the deeper purpose of Art, to quote philosopher Friedrich Schiller, "...is not merely to translate the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to make him free.""

"Or the late, great psychedelic alchemist trip-master Terence McKenna , who rhapsodized about magic mushrooms, the collective over soul, gathering eminences, star ships, microbial creatures, membranes of inexplicable love, transcendental dramas, and birthing the self. McKenna and others believed that mushrooms are trying to tell us something in some cosmic fungal language— a bit of madness that arguably is more in tune with the thinking of today’s artists than a show of Beatles album covers is." - Jerry Stalz, New York Magazine Art Review on the Whitney's Summer of Love exhibition

Another friend theories, queries: "fairy tale futures remember aoristic internet" & "a curious hypothesis wonders how might a forest's fungal internet respond to the world wide web?"

Me and my soul family make McKenna seem sane. Alchemists, all.

"I'm a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change." - John Lennon

And, hey, we're not even on drugs when we bounce sparks off each other. Me, never so much as touched a cigarette. (Mostly because I was afraid where drugs might take me... I might not be in rigid control, or something.) Now, unless it's ayahuasca with a shaman maybe Santo Daime in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest or tasting the clouds in the Peruvian highlands, it's superfluous.

I'm tripping enough.

We're jamming on unconditioned love and truth and the exilir of life.

And we couldn't do it alone. Enlightenment takes mirrors of our own selves refracting, reflecting, refluxing, remembering, reigniting, rekindling, realizing our own face before we were born squarely back to Us. And this synergestic combustion is what I think started to happen in the late 60s:

"The Oracle would go from hand to hand and mind to mind in the evocative states unveiled by marijuana and LSD. It was a centering instrument for that intense, aesthetic, and expanded perceptual universe. To this day I meet people who tell me how they had seen an Oracle in some small town in West Virginia, or thereabouts. They attribute to that sighting of the Oracle their recognition that they were not alone on a dark planet in an empty universe. From that moment on they date the beginning of their journey toward self-realization." - Allen Cohen, Notes on the SF Oracle for the Haight-Asbury in The Sixties CD

I see the future, I see the Art-Happening called Awakening (see Bonus Deux), and well beyond to the Golden Age because it's Here, and it was all set into motion Then. (We set the Future-Present-Past into motion every moment).

You can see it so clear in 1967... Clearer still right this June Seven, Two-O-O-Seven, no?:

"Thus, the Oracle pages correspond to the methodology of the Thanka art of Tibet and Byzantine art in which artists established a visionary state of mind, through meditation, chanting, abstinence and/or prayer, and tried to convey that vision in their painting.

The perceivers of the art then could mount to that same elevation, and experience within their mind the same visionary state. So, looking at an Oracle could be a sort of occult trance experience communicated across the dimensions of space and time, through the tabloid medium, from one explorer of inner worlds to another. That was the magic, the fire, that spread from mind to mind with the Oracle. Motifs and techniques were universal -- from ancient Chinese spirals to Sci Fi. Wings, rays, auras, arabesques, swirls, unicorns, and centaurs, mandalas, collages, flying saucers and their inhabitants, op-art, flowers and paisley, nudes, feathers, and ghosted images were interwoven into a dazzling cross-cultural spectacle of multidimensional depth, pattern and flow." - Allen Cohen, Notes on the SF Oracle for the Haight-Asbury in The Sixties CD

p.s. In San Francisco on June 25th? Expect an Art-Happening... details unfolding...

Nostaglia/ background info: Wikipedia on Summer of Love; Whitney Museum Summer of Love exhibition (showing May 24-Sept 16); Summer of Love Whitney exhibition in NYC, review; San Francisco Chronicle's 40th anniversary of Summer of Love coverage; lyrics to "All You Need Is Love" and Wikipedia's two cents; a cover to an issue of The San Francisco Oracle; Summer of Love essay by Allen Cohen, of San Francisco Oracle fame and co-organizer of the Human Be-In; San Francisco Oracle and Haight-Asbury history, compiled by Allen Cohen; Seattle Times' coverage of Summer of Love 40th

BONUS: "A mover and shaker in the hippie scene [& living in H-A in 1967] and now a social critic and professor, [Theodore] Roszak summed up the Flower Power movement in the following way:

"I don't think the Summer of Love left any blueprints behind on how to build a better world. It was much more a showcase for enjoyment, for happiness, for freedom, as people understood it then. But if you probe to the underlying values of displays like that, protests like that, you can perhaps see the seeds of a better social order than the one we're living in now. If the ideals of the Sixties had prevailed, it would be a world, where people lived gently on the planet without the sense that they have to exploit nature or make war upon nature in order to find basic security. It would be a simpler way of life, less urban, less consumption-oriented, and much more concerned about spiritual values, about companionship, friendship, community. Community was one of the great words of this period, getting together with other people, solving problems, enjoying one another's company, sharing ideas, values, insights. And if that's not what life is all about, if that's not what the wealth is for, then we are definitely on the wrong path." - Mark Vallen blog "Art for a Change", Summer of Love, Take 2

images Yab-Yum, by Paul Kagan (Oracle issue #7 cover); 2nd photo "It was the end of believing...", origin long forgotten, definitely not Sixties;  Vernon Panton's Phantasy Landscape Version II (1970/2000) at the Whitney/ photo © Panton Design, Basel; light show from Gene Anthony's photo gallery from the 1967 Summer of Love; Erick Wong's photo from the 1967 Summer of Love (via SF Chronicle's 40th anniversary coverage)

Bonus Deux: Paul Levy on the Art-Happening Called Awakening (my twist is bit mo over the top immersive experential fun):