Crossroads Dispatches

grace not guilt, devotion not deprivation, expression not repression

Packing to leave this Silicate Valley that swirls of money and machines, towards that that swirls of magic and mirth, I've already begun to miss what I'll miss.

I absorb sequoia masts enshrouded in mists on my walk to the strip mall corner cafe this afternoon. This ravens' lair uncharacteristically silent today. Then there's the magnolia that love fell into me last Juneteenth. Ah, the grapefruit tree on Johnson with the lullaby yellow fragrant fruit.

in this moist almost silence
in this ancient breathing stillness
in this endless moment
in this obeisance
the trees
speak
- Graeme K. Talboys

I awake to the buzzing sound of grinding two days ago. Later, I see for myself: sawdust and limbs piled on the street two doors down. Another perfectly healthy tree chopped down. Does anyone ask the tree? Does anyone ask me? What gross violations of free will are we condoning? I'm still dazed and unsure what is going on, but trees are being marked for "removal" for blocks on end here where I currently live.

On a recent hike in the nearest preserve, Fremont Older, there is a sign pronouncing "Sudden Oak Disease" is spreading throughout. Does anyone listen to the omens and patterns and symbols any longer? Does everyone not converse with roses and figs and rosemary any longer?

I'm not really sure what to say about "the environment" although I've committed to Blog Action Day today. I remember once an introduction to Zen comic book when I was becoming willing to be curious that maybe the world wasn't limited to my conceptions of it. In the comic, a swimming fish seeker ponders thoughtfully, "Um, so, what is thing they call the ocean?"

Well, to be more accurate, and it may be harder to capture in a panel and thought balloons because of its Self-referential absurdity, it's more like the ocean asking, "What is the ocean?" We feel ourselves a mere drop in the ocean - distinct, disparate somehow from the ocean. Yet that very drop is the ocean, the waves, the raincloud arching toward the sky and back again. Nature and our nature: not two, not one, this.

Maybe Pythagoras is to blame. He taught this "dictotomy of perfect mathematical forms and imperfect material forms" and later influenced generations of philosophers such as Plato and other that promoted metaphysical dualism which has resulted in countless debates of matter over spirit or is it spirit over matter as if they were divided natures. Perhaps we can also thank the churches for the "matter is evil" tyranny we're under today. But all that is pointless philosophical blathering.

When I moved to a sublet this summer in San Francisco (my last attempt to make diamond being fit into square wormhole), I'd see stuff everywhere like these stickers on paper towel dispensers: "Don't forget...these come from trees." If I needed more guilt heaped up, I'd have remained a Catholic, thank you very much. Meanwhile, while all these declarations to be green or else surrounding one in the steely streets I never noticed anyone actually admiring trees (much less hugging) nor eyes meeting my gaze in the cafes.

I don't believe guilt is going to save the world. I believe in grace.

I don't believe deprivation is going to save the world. I believe in devotion.

I don't believe repression is going to save the world. I believe in expression.

The whole notion of "saving the world" is fraught with dilemmas too. But this post is getting  carried away as it is. So I'm cutting to the chase: Forget saving the world. Enjoy yourself and you cannot help but be re membered to your own nature which has always been inseparateable from Nature, from Universe, from Multiverse.

Live in graceful devotional expression of the divine, and it is easeful to be a freegan.

"If you are experiencing anything other than pleasure than you are experiencing some sort of resistance to your ultimate survival." - Ian Xel Lungold

We are moving from a time of the programming of original sin to original participation. Emancipation (asserting our free will) and Imagination too are elements of life, vitality.

"Orpheus dates back to an ancient time when words and things were not yet separated but were united in a kind of melodic chant. Naming, singing, was identical with creation, with making reality. Or, rather, in naming, the Gods spoke through the name... In this sense, poetry was science; language was knowledge and power. At least in the mouth of the prophet-poet-shaman, language was the language of the Gods." - Christopher Bamford, Homage to Pythagoras (quote via Radical Nature) 

The Secret started to hint of keys like Appreciation and Imagination. Keys out of this base level of game play yet still acting within narrow perimeters as if this were the only game in this tune town Terra. So most folks borrowed the keys out of "prison" to jot down to the IKEA, get a spanking new comfy futon, zip back to prison, all the while merely rearranging the furniture. There is more to Mother, more to matter than meets the eye.

"Close your eyes and make a wish. You didn’t have to think very hard about it did you? Now ask yourself what is standing in between you and that dream? Take your time. You have the answer inside you." - Stephanie Azaria, Weekly Horoscope 10/15-10/21/2007 for Leo (he, he the Leo aspect within each of us is the curious child creatix)

The signs are all around of a new age as I flit about my day: Leo Dr, Eden Ave, Fruitdale Dr, Orchard Dr, Goddess Ct. And reminders to wreath myself in symbols abound too like Riddle Drive.

"And the shamanic-Orphic chants, songs, and poetry were the means by which the human mind could participate in the story of matter itself. But we lost this deep connection a long time ago -- when we stopped listening, and nature and the gods fell silent." - Christian de Quincey, Radical Nature: Rediscovering the Soul of Matter

This topic is too vast, too inner resting to try to complete today, or for that matter, ever complete. Creation is a never-ending game. I look forward to inviting you engage your imagination and play in a new game, World With All. This is a collaborative reality game. It starts Now from right where you are. Another version of it starts here on this blog (yep, I grabbed WorldWithAll.org too) sometime after the Mercury retrograde.

Enjoy yourself as Adyashanti says, and in joy in your self, as Eckhart Tolle would say.

Art: When Apples Were Golden, by John Strudwick, The Music of a Bygone Age, by John Strudwick (via German site on Lady Genevieve as Hellenic symbol, I think); Saint Cecilia, by John William Waterhouse; The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo by Marie Spartali Stillman.

Bonus: Since I mentioned the lovely magnolia that ceased me last Juneteenth two thousand sixth anno domini, here's a letter I mailed to a lover that next day:

"I went to see Adya last night - hadn't seen him in person in a month since he'd been doing the whole East coast tour thing. I'm used to seeing him (except for my Asia trip) more often. I cannot say that it was his doing that he took me to a whole new level per se, but in his
presence I realized yet another depth to what I already know.

I walked home alone from Safeway (needed some toiletries) afterward. My car works again, I'm just in a walking mode and the moon crescent was beautiful and calling me to walk. I came to a magnolia, the giant blossoms are now like a leafy menorah holding pearl-white candles pointing upward to the night, and I was moved to touch it.

I spotted and placed my palm to the heart of the tree. I feel it, petting its bark moving my hands the way a blind person explores your face for the first time in order to know you every inch. There is nothing sexual, erotic in that touch. Why do I have to say that? Something's shifted deeper into another intimacy altogether. This isn't about rediscovering my sexuality, sensuality. It is an exploration of my very own boundless body, probably what they've always meant by the Body of Christ. Foreign, new, familiar.

As I touch the tree I almost cry but no tears come just the pang of it hits my chest. I don't need to cry anymore. We're home. We're reunited again. I realize that I had come upon something true I wrote to you right after [a trip together] - "I'm speechless." But I kept that knowing at bay to a shallower,albeit playful, level. I didn't let myself feel what that truthfully meant maybe... until last night.

Yesterday I was at a cafe where there are tubs of chalk and chalkboard walls in the bathroom. I had to come back today to check out what the actual exchange was and what I wrote, because something profound 'happened' since. So I was reading this exchange on the chalkboard :

Person 1 scrawls: Love is a dirty word. Use it carefully.

Person 2: Love is just a word.

Person 3: Love is a scary word.

Person 4: Dam I wish we all could talk in Latin they had 5-7 words 4 Love like brother love, love for your wife/husband and so on.

Person 5 a.k.a me just had to chime in, yet something else wrote for me:

Observe getting caught in words, concepts. Love is Wordless.

Whatever I wrote then that afternoon I understood deeply by midnight...a meditation seized me, humbled me, plunged me to another deepness. I don't know how long I was in meditation - hours - I think I went to bed past 2.

I feel speechless, wordless, dumbstruck almost - except that of course I'm actually wiser but it's unspeakable. Wisestruck, moonstruck?

I came upon this quote a few days ago: "Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame." - Thoreau

I  don't feel scared now... In fact I look forward to melting myself. Into my Self.

Mr. So-called Chaotic Bundle of Wax [his own words, not mine], the invitation is always there to acknowledge the liquid pool of Being already now. And, in realm of time, the invite is there to experience the process of the melt together. I don't mean only me, either, it always happens in the context of relationship because we see our nature in reflection.

This reminds me of how much I'm absorbed watching lava lamps as they seem to capture the felt sense of that flux of moving into and out of each other and exploring, discovering this mysterious delicious cosmic body of Being."

Bonus 2: Very apropos during this time of messages on tuning in to Nature's messages and "normally unseen spiritual energies" by Stephanie Azaria.

with an apple I will astonish Paris

“With an apple I will astonish Paris.” - Paul Cezanne

A friend is picking apples and other delectables in an organic farm in Washington state. For the record, I'm typing this on a computer, I have a BSEE (that's collecting dust), so it's not exactly like I'm a primmie. I sense that gardens and geometry (yet another rabbit hole of a storyline) are the hubs of the gaiac equation. Here's a short excerpt of a recent chat with my friend:

9:40 PM me: aha, read this...This is so very close to what I envision as art colony,eARTh...

"Everyone needs their own space. And everyone needs a space in which they can be a community. Eating and meeting determine the communal space. The garden is in common, and all craft and artistic activities are best executed autonomously and anonymously as a collective whole. We each breathe and live in the same common space. Who is to say where the inspiration comes from? The cook in the kitchen cooks the beets which make the soul of the poet come alive. Was the poem in the beet and the love of the cook before it became a song in the mind? Give thanks to all beings and take credit for nothing. The Creator sustains the flow." - Sixteen Principles for the Reunion of Condor and Eagle

9:42 PM faun: perfect

9:43 PM me: so very perfect, so the garden of eden spirals forth again...thinking i will leave here in a month, thinking maybe NOLA, but just pack and it'll be obvious

thinking of community gardens, gardens in abandoned yards(homes)

9:46 PM faun: similar conversation tonight was over food not bombs; a friend said gardens not lawns

me: yes!  oui!

9:48 PM faun: as you've once said; serendipity

one day the dream of a tree house; a forest; a garden; alternative/solar energy . . .

  peace love & light

me: one day very soon, gaia would like that too

9:49 PM faun: ecovillages everywhere

9:50 PM me: i am off to skip to find spot in america that people desire that, and to create art rather than work 9-5 to pay cable bill

9:51 PM faun: something authentic

9:52 PM   what we were created for; art

Indeed, what we were created for -- to create Art on eARTh.

"You want a revolution? Don’t pick up a gun. Pick up a hoe." - John Mohawk

p.s. I rigorously rambunctiously suggest you join the Twitter twibe, I'm at eve11. It's one way for artists to collectively share and mutually support our work towards building eARTh colony wherever our home and heart is. Sure, right now there is a glut of techies and PR folk on Twitter, but I'll plug you into the network of green lovers, artists and poets, if you email me privately. It definitely doesn't work to read Twitter. Its genius is not in broadcasting news; but enabling moment to moment haiku-like two-way dialogue. The Maitreya effect of friend to friend to friend in action. It's active participation (SMS aka text messaging is bonus), collaboration and bouncing inspiration back and forth that makes it worthwhile.

ART Paul Cezanne's Still-life with Apples or, Nature morte. Les Pomme; Paul Cezanne's Vessels, Basket & Fruit

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.

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.)

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

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):

beyond 'The Secret' series: qualifications

"The reason can give nothing at all
Like the response to desire." - Wallace Stevens

What are my qualifications to host a "beyond 'The Secret'" series?

Am I an expert on abundance?

Am I credentialed in manifestation?

Am I hailing from the right lineage of teachers and masters?

(Forgodsakes last week she only had four dollars in her wallet. What does she know?)

Do you see the trap you've fallen into if you believe I have to be an expert? That I need a diploma in manifestation? That you'd like to talk to my stockbroker and financial advisor for evidence that I know squat about what I'm talking about?

Oh, I may be tempted to give you some "credentials" but the Universal laws don't give a damn.

If you need my qualifications to listen, there's a good chance you're holding a belief that maybe you need to be "certified" or "anointed" in some manner to create what you desire. Maybe you're thinking you've got to "pay your dues" and "earn" your creations. Or, at least, be able to prove yourself a worthy enough investment for the Universe to take notice (as if it operates as a bank or venture capitalist).

If you need my qualifications to hear, there's a good chance you believe that someone else, anyone else, is granting you this unconditioned and unlimited wisdom, power, love already innate within you.

You don't earn your way through good works, or prove your worthiness, or chalk up enough merits and pay your indulgences.

And She doesn't require a recommendation, a lead, or your ROI analysis. She doesn't require a return on her investment whatsoever.

Grace is free! Absolutely Absolute vast & free.

Let's just say that my sincere desire to have these mysteries revealed is more than enough. And that's enough for me, and it's enough for you.

I understand though; there's oftimes I don't trust that the very tenderest fluttering of love and willingness are going to suffice either.

I have been for so many years absorbed in a quest and exploration of the transcendent otherworlds of formless and Absolute consciousness. Currently, I find myself totally smitten by the tangible, and Earth herself. And the alchemical union of the formless with form.

My favorite Tarot card captivates me. It is the Princess of Disks (to the right), representing "earthiness of the earth."

"Here we have an attempt to translate into a picture the spiritual quality of earth, eternally pregnant and containing in its fertility the unwritten cypher of cosmic lore." - "Princess of Disks" interpretation, Instructions for Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot Deck

Eternally pregnant. I adore that image of creation. This devotion, that desire to touch this earthiness of the earth for my self, more than suffices... for earnest desire ruffles the wind and moves the mountains and it is the way of manifesting in Mother, in matter.

Be wary of experts. You are the guru. (GURU = Gee, you are you.)

So I'm not writing this as an expert bestowing expertlyness, but rather as an adventurer and creatrix of the golden age cavorting with fellow wayfarers & imagineers.

You have all the questions and answers, as you are all the questions and answers. We need only to quit pretending we don't...

"One mother describes her own experience with her 5 year-old. “We were in the kitchen. I was cleaning out a cabinet and she was playing. Out of the blue she said, ‘This is our last year, Mom.’

“Taken totally aback but definitely not wanting to startle her, I nonchalantly asked her ‘Oh yeah? Whaddya mean?’

“‘I mean, this is our last year to pretend. After this year we get to be real again. No more pretending.’

“I kept cleaning out the cabinet and asked her if she could explain any more. She said, ‘This is our last chance to get to pretend. After this, we get to be real again. No more chances for pretending because this is our last chance.’

“I did ask her (still nonchalantly but showing interest), ‘And this is a good thing, right?’

“‘Oh yes, Mom... a very good thing. We’ll get to be angels very soon.’" - "Indigo Children", Library of Halexandria

Bonus: "When I first saw the Princess of Disks, I was utterly captivated. [Me too!] I got a Scandinavian feel from her, particularly Finnish--which really made me identify with her, as I'm a quarter Finnish and a quarter Danish.

I made an immediate connection not only with the card, but also with the disk she holds. To me, it's the Sampo: a magical object forged by Ilmarinen the smith in the Finnish national epic 'The Kalevala'. The Sampo was supposed to be a three-sided mill, one side grinding out grain, one salt, and one money. Its lid is multicolored and even though it is eventually destroyed by Louhi, mistress of the North Farm whose daughter Ilmarinen courts, its fragments take root and continue to produce and symbolize prosperity. It makes perfect sense for the Princess of Disks, the earth of earth, to be holding the Sampo (who knows, perhaps she is the daughter Ilmarinen had been seeking to wed, born of witch-blood and proper bearer of the Sampo)." - posting by 'prosewitch' on the Aeclectic Tarot forum

images Timothy Lantz' (newly discovered - wow; I totally love a pure sleek dark too) A Change in the Wind; Princess of Disks from the Thoth Deck, art by Lady Freida Harris; Timothy Lantz' Quintessence

beyond 'The Secret' series

"The higher realms knows that what we focus on becomes our reality… it becomes our experience and everything around us only serves to act as our stage… a stage that serves to support what we are choosing in our lives and what we are choosing to fill our heads with. Our surroundings love to support what we choose to create in every way. They are at our beckoned call… willingly manifesting what we are wanting to see and believing we see. We are masterful creators indeed. Blame can only exist when we refuse to see own our own power as true creators." - Karen Bishop, Energy Alert 5.24.07, What's Up on Planet Earth

Most of the time we're not creating, we're miscreating. Okay, I'll speak for myself... too much of the time I'm miscreating. Maybe you symphasize.

An invaluable lesson I learned from whitewater kayaking (besides you better know how to right yourself up in a hurry, those underwater rocks can hurt pretty little heads), is that you will die young if you focus on where you don't want to go.

These hardshell boats are fitted snug to your hips, so if you are looking straight at the looming gargoyle of a rock that you definitely don't want to be anywhere near, then staring in bewilderment at the granite siren is the surest way to find yourself headed for it since the boat follows every twitch and movement of your body, including your upper torso.

The strategy is to look only at what boaters call "your line" - the path where you do want to go.

"Nothing is enough to a man whom enough is too little." - Epicurus

So what do I do when I am down to my last four bucks? I pull out The History of Beauty, a voluptuous volume seething with art & beauty by Umberto Eco. This is the time to respire la vie. This is the time to inhale the abundance that is already all around us.

This is not the time to panic and stream, "My lord, there's a huge rock and I'm headed straight for it!"

Jesus perceived this and said, "Why are you reasoning among yourselves, you men of little faith, because  you have no bread?" - Matthew 16:8

Color, Eco helped me recall, may be taken for granted today yet color was highly prized in Medieval times.

"Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways." - Oscar Wilde

Is anyone paying attention to luxurious colors? All free for the intoxicating enjoyment? Even as I walked past cambio de cheques and Check 'N Go "payday advance" and Western Union shops lined up one after another (tucked in between all the laundromats) & Wells Fargo ads in Spanish promising us one day someday one day we'll be able to afford our very own washing machine. Even then as I walked by the day laborers collective in the Mission (San Francisco) the other day, what really jumped out vivid technicolor blazing were the seeping with color building-sized murals. (There's nothing like public art.)

"Paint only what you desire and paint it simply: God is in all things, God is Love." - Dante Gabriel Rosetti

Colors rock. For instance, the brilliant vermilion is still semi-precious. "As pure sources of cinnabar are rare, natural vermilion has always been extremely expensive. In the Middle Ages, vermilion was often as expensive as gilding. As of 2007 a 35ml tube of genuine Chinese Vermilion oil paint can cost £112 (US $170)."

"Artificial colors derived from minerals or vegetables thus represented wealth, while the poor wore only fabrics in drab and modest colors. It was normal for a peasant to wear gray or brown clothes made of rough natural fabrics, not dyed, threadbare, and almost always dirty... The richness of colors and the splendor of gems were marks of power, and thus objects of desire and marvel... On the other hand, the underprivileged, whose lot was to live in a natural environment that was certainly harsher and tougher, but more wholesome than it is today, could enjoy only the spectacle of nature, the sky, sunlight, and moonlight, and flowers." - Umberto Eco, The History of Beauty

So this evening, I walk (cost $0) to the Safeway store. Enroute I watch the white shimmering Sun (cost $0) lower into the horizon. At that eye-to-eye angle, it's so much easier to catch it's like a spinning top rotating off ecstasy.

I say hello (cost $0) to the startled red-headed woman (people aren't used to strangers greeting them?) whom admired the garden entrance to the condos and gingerly tenderly brushed her hand across the living tendrils of greenery.

Admittedly not the most aesthetic grocery store displays in the world, yet it's up to me to pay attention to the colors in the store. The flowers are luscious, especially the bouquet of roses mixed with differing combustible fiery shades. I've gone totally overboard in the last year for magentas, vermillions, rusts, salmons, pinks, roses, sangrias, crimsons (although I once was a greens and purples girl).

"Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one." - Paul Klee

Admiration of flowers (priceless, though actual cost $0).

I'm tugged to the wine aisle. The curve of the glass beckons. I decide to play a game and see which ones are the prettiest labels. Herding Cats is bursting with power and fun; and I love big cats, especially sleek mysterious jaguars. Cardinal Zin (Bonny Doon) is spunky. Trinity Oaks is lushly beautiful with a dyad theme. And Marcelina Vineyards' evocation of the bounty of the harvest, a woman plucking fruit off the orchard tree, is almost sublime. (Inhaling the beauty of wine labels, cost $0.)

I head over the magazine aisle and am drawn to Wonder Time. The current issue includes a field guide to fairies, you see. (Flipping through magazine, cost $0.)

Next I head to the candy aisle for the chocolate I planned this excursion around (when in doubt, chocolate saves your ass) and see that the Lindt Excellence Intense Orange dark chocolate happens to be on sale for $2.50.

Heading out to pay, it doesn't cost another nickel to laugh at the clerk's joking with the adjacent clerk. (Laughter has always been free medicine. How we forget.) I head home under the sentinel of towering redwoods and candlesque butter magnolia blossoms (cost of naturalist tour, $0). When I get home I savor a handful of lush chunks of chocolate, an succulent orange and a dark cup of orange spice black tea.

Drumroll please. Grand monetary expenditure for the day: $2.50.

p.s. Yes, this is the beginning of a blooming new series, or a fun twist on delving into Wealth: Epicurean pleasure, abundance, wishes, lust for life, passion, midwifery of matter, creating reality, the fertility of summer, & excess riches galore.

p.p.s. Of course, oui, I got the Death card today: "The Death card indicates this transition from lower to higher to highest. This is a card of humility, and it may indicate the Querent as being brought low, but only so that they can then go higher than they ever have before. Wang notes that Death "humbles" all, but it also "exults." Always keep in mind that on this card of darkness there is featured a sunrise as well." - interpretation via AecleticTarot.com

images Luscious Red, by Ruth Palmer; Venus Venicordia, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; tulip photo via The Rampant Scotland newsletter; Vermillion by John Rainsford

anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." - Oscar Wilde

I reckoned the other day that there isn't much betwixt those who who read this blog and those who write it. I admit I'm not even sure the word betwixt is befitting here - I simply like that word, betwixt. Betwixt means

1. In the space which separates; between.

From betwixt two aged oaks. Milton.

2. From one to another of; mutually affecting.

There was some speech of marriage Betwixt myself and her. Shakespeare.

...and I like the etymology of betwixt, from two each: Etymology: Middle English, from Old English betwux, from be- + -twux (akin to Gothic tweihnai two each).

Anyhow, the point is that I realized that although Truth is a pathless land ala Krishnamurti, there are a couple of well trodden paths of desire.

The people that tend to congregate here, and congregrate in my life, tend to be those that are foolish enough to take the road less travelled and embark on the most direct, most "dangerous" (they say) path to enlightenment. Setting sail at Beauty and marching straight right through the Abyss, according to the mystical tradition of the Qabbalah. (One variation of being mine own, which is the Path of the High Priestess through Art.)

So considering my next theme here at Crossroads Dispatches that would help each of us, collectively I turned to my handy mirror to the Soul (the Soul bridging the material world and the spiritual - hmmm, I write that as if there were any betwixt between Samsara and Nirvana), the Tarot...

...and pulled the card: Wealth, or the 10 of Pentacles.

A very good choice, I should say. Sometimes the Pentacles are called Disks, Coins, Gold or Diamonds and its elemental ruler is Earth... "This Suit is grounded in the material and physical world, symbolic of accomplishment and manifestation. Disks represent Manifestation, physical expression in the world, physical creation."

The 10 of Pentacles is one of the most auspicious cards in the Tarot deck, besides World. Don't know about you, but the timing of this theme couldn't be better for me.

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." - Oscar Wilde

It's no secret that I'm no fan of The Secret. I'm well aware there is a fine line between white and black magic, & miracles and manipulation.

My interest in Wealth is not necessarily to conjure up jewels, or bicycles, or mansions, although the other day I did have a nice plate of sundried tomato grits and fresh biscuit smothered with a basil butter. Nope, my dream is more global, aye galactic, in nature: a world shrouded in enchantment and mystery and beauty and intimate friendship is more up my alley:

“You may already be an Anarchist.

It's true. If your idea of healthy human relations is a dinner with friends, where everyone enjoys everyone else's company, responsibilities are divided up voluntarily and informally, and no one gives orders or sells anything, then you are an anarchist, plain and simple. The only question that remains is how you can arrange for more of your interactions to resemble this model.” - from fighting for our lives: an anarchist primer

It's not that I want "more" as much as sometimes I'm noting we use "lack" as an excuse to not fully express our true selves.

"If you wish to understand others, you must intensify your own individualism." - Oscar Wilde

And I don't want to forget that the buck always stops Here. Reminded of a favorite bumper sticker I once saw: "Are We Here Yet?"

"We're programmed to constantly expect more, work harder, climb higher. But true abundance eludes us until we learn to put our whole attention into what we're doing now. Until we master this present moment awareness, nothing we achieve will ever make us happy or whole. Any time you catch yourself saying "If only..." this week, slip back into the sensual lushness of your present moment experience. This is the space where miracles happen." - this week's Libra horoscope over at D.K. Brainard's site

Talking about Wealth means I'll be talking about alchemy. Which isn't about turning base metals into gold so much. The Harry Potter books brought 14th century Parisien bookseller and alchemist Nicholas Flamel back into the limelight. Flamel and his wife never went without, and gave generously to his community erecting hospitals for the poor and the like. Legend has it, he's the only one whom ever located the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, or the secret of gold and eternal life:

"This book fell into the hands of precisely the man who was destined to receive it; and he, with the help of the text and the hieroglyphic diagrams that taught the transmutation of metals into gold, accomplished the transmutation of his soul, which is a far rarer and more wonderful operation."

"Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you." - Oscar Wilde

p.s.  Friend last week: "God's work just doesn't pay."

Me: "Lately I'm finding the opposite to be true; it's becoming the only thing that does."

Bonus: A bit more on the 10 of Pentacles, Wealth card:

"Therefore, in it is drawn the very figure of the Tree of Life itself. This card, to the other thirty-five small cards, is what the twenty-first Trump, The Universe, is to the rest of the Trumps." - Ten of Disks, from Super Tarot

"When drawing the Ten of Pentacles in a reading, it symbolizes everything positive in the suit of Pentacles. Wealth, material abundance, abundant gardens, family happiness, happy home, traditional marriage, loyalty, love, your wishes will come true." - Ten of Pentacles, by PurpleLady

images Lady with Fan, Gustav Klimt (1917); opium den via Apothecary's Blotter Art Gallery; cover of Journal des Demoiselles, Fashionable dresses for young ladies