Pierced

My bloggings are taking a back seat to the constant whir of life. Freelance assignments have swamped me. And I try to keep my weekends computer free. Working at the screen all week all day long fries my eyes and my mind.



My niece is visiting from Isreal for a few weeks, and we spent last weekend together pursuing a kind of holy grail. Nose piercing. I've been wanting to do it since I was a teenager. And when I turned 47 a few months ago, I promised myself to do it at last. When my niece came I asked her if she would come with me. She said she wanted to do it too. So we asked her mom, my sister, who said yes, and the adventure began.



I thought it would be fun to have it done in Woodstock where we might spend the day, do a little shopping, have a little lunch. So I made some calls the day before, and was told I would need a signed release form from my sister, notarized, with her passport because my niece was not 18.



When I walked into my mother's house the next morning to pick up my niece, my sister was trying to fax the documents, my mother was freaking out, my father was stomping around, and my niece couldn't wait to get out of there. It was pouring, torrential. My parents were on their way to the funeral service of a freind who had died a few months before.



When we finally got to my house, my niece realized she'd left her own passport at my parents, so we had to drive back to get it. By the time we got to Woodstock, I'd been driving for 4 or 5 hours. So when the guy who was supposed to do the piercing told me he wouldn't, I was aggravated to say the least. He claimed he didn't know she was only 13. I'd told him on the phone the day before. And he said that their faces change too much. I countered that babies have their noses pierced in other cultures. But he wouldn't budge and back into the car we slumped.



We'd noticed another tatoo/piercing parlor on the way to Woodstock and I kept it in mind driving back toward Kingston, wondering what we could do. We stopped and looked in; it wasn't open yet. And while we waited for the rain to let up to run back to the car, we noticed a woman opening the door and followed her.



While the place in Woodstock had been slick and bright, with displays of tatoos and body jewelry, even a counter top interactive video screen, this one had decidedly female energy. It seemed like the kind of place you might go for a seance or a fortune telling.



The girl at the desk told us what the guy in Woodstock had said on the phone: we needed a notarized release form. She also warned us against trying to have our piercings done at the mall, where they would use a piercing gun that would splatter our flesh. She also let us know that only a ring would do; a post would almost insure infection too.



When we left I was feeling a bit desperate. Everything I was being told was fueling fear. And yet, I desperately wanted to do this, not only for myself, but as an experience with and for my niece. I owed her a gift for her bat mitzvah a few months before, and this was I thought, going to be perfect, something we'd both remember forever.



By this time we were both starving so I headed for downtown Kingston where I knew a great little place for lunch, and suspected there might also be a tattoo parlor around the corner.



It was the real deal. We could have been in the East Village. The room was smokey; the music was heavy metal, loud. There were Jesus posters lining the walls. And beyond the jewelry cases, arranged in a v with the wide angle opening into the room, as if to invite you to travel its unmarked path to the back, was a darkened space with barber shop chairs.



The guy who came out to help us was pierced and tattooed everywhere. His fingernails were dirty. I noticed that none of the jewelry was in the little sterilized pouches like those I'd seen in the city. They were just laying flat inside, on the glass.



I used the bathroom in back and it wasn't pretty. The guy in charge who was doing a tattoo had a cigarette dangling from his lips and quite a few teeth missing. But he didn't ask me to sign any papers for my niece and said they would do it, as long as she was tough. We said we'd think about it and come back.

summer speed

the lazy days of summer are escaping me. time is moving too quickly. barely a moment to catch my breath. one moment jumps to another. the days are a string of pearls that slip through my fingers each time i try to fasten the clasp. and yet... a few weeks ago by the light of a not quite full moon i drummed by the light of a small fire pit i built in the side yard. i played my flute in the sun. i have been harvesting mint like crazy. the chamomile is in full bloom as is the lemon balm. sage is sprouting and basil too.

driving the back way from my house to omega two fawn crossed my path. larry saw a fox on our way home from the movies one night. there are too many dead racoons in the road. turtles are sunning themselves on branches and rocks in ponds by the side of the road.

i have not had much art time lately. still plugging away on an installation piece that is coming together one small bit at a time. and i had a commission for a ring from a co-worker who just moved to hong kong. also, the catskill rural aids society asked for another donation of mazel tov, spice of life and healing herb magnets -- people apparently fight over them at these fund raisers to which i am happy to donate.

next weekend i will be leading a shamanic journey workshop at the women's martial arts special training in massachusetts. 350 women martial artists learning and sharing ancient styles and modern insights with one another.

for more info:



nwmaf.org

heightened moments

I was walking down Wooster from Grand, on my way from one Deitch Project exhibition to another when I stepped into what seemed another world, as if waters were parting to life itself. Two women in blue smocks and blue bonnets to protect their hair sat on a stoop eating their lunches. A dark haired woman, not so young tentatively negotiated the sidewalk with a stroller and its twins. A Latino woman stepped out of a car parked on the curb and turned into the sidewalk as if offering the child in her arms. And there across the street a black man sat in the sun, a wide brimmed, circular pointed hat shading his face, a newspaper spread at his feet and and rising from the pavement surrounding him, as if the wings of a phoenix, tribal drums and masks and other african objects in a fan of fantasy directly across from the open garage door that functions as Deitch's entrance. I wondered if it were a part of the installation within, somehow knowing it wasn't. But once inside, transported again by teepee and sphinx and patchwork paintings I thought of Burning Man, and yearned for alternate realities on my way back from lunch to work.