la superette

I've just submitted Street Bling and Prayer Beads for this year's La Superette, a great art and artist's venue for the holidays. I participated in 2003 and for some reason didn't last year. Probably because of my adventures with Lyme. This year's event will be at Exit Art, which is very exciting because it's a great space, the backdrop will be amazing as Exit Art's exhibitions always are. And I love that I performed Bead Meditation there for prayingproject, and it will feel like being home again.
Larry and I saw Laurie Anderson perform The End of the Moon last night at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie. It's an amazing piece and not at all heart-lifting, which I tend to prefer in my art as well as my life. But there were certain moments of beauty and grace in it that balance the darkness.
On Wednesday night in the city we had a chance to see Junior Mance and Virginia Mayhew at the Greenwich School of Music on Barrow Street. It was a great evening. A small performance space on the second floor of the school, with a raised platform stage. A small crowd. And amazing, absolutely amazing musicians. Larry knows Junior from back in the day at Seido. Virginia is a 3rd degree black belt. And Ed Ellington - grandson of Duke Ellington, and a kyoshi at Seido, and a jazz musician in his own right was also there.
It was a treat to have a week punctuated by art and music that are particularly poignant examples of artists on their path. We come in all shapes and sizes, with a zillion ways of expressing ourselves, and to varying degrees of commercial success in the marketplace. But in the presence of any artist, no matter how successful, one senses a connection of universal proportions. We are all vessels full of ideas and impressions that aren't really mainstream. I think it was Jung who said that artists are a society's collective unconscious. We are the dreamers and the dreams.

Water Call

Water Prayer is going to take 10,000 beads. So I'm putting out a call to invite bead submissions from around the world. I will keep a collaborator list of who has submitted beads and where they are from. I'm hoping to get a few collectives, and schools involved, as well as individual artists, crafters and anyone who has time on their hands to experience the meditative magic of making paper beads.
For bead making instructions, just google "making paper beads".
Most important: Your beads should be made of papers from consumer products that require the use of water. So no junk mail and magazines unless the paper refers to water in some way. I am using tea packages mostly, but also paper from water filters, labels from sauce jars, ferry schedules, etc.
I'd prefer to stay away from products that pollute water - so bubble baths and construction products are out - but I'm open to suggestion. Keep in mind this is an environmental project. I'm interested in increasing our awareness of water's sacredness, and that's something to meditate on while making the beads.
When you begin to realize how many of the products we use are water-related, it's overwhelming. When you begin to realize how many of those products also destroy the quality of water, you begin to think twice about using them. Chlorine bleach comes to mind.
Many of the instructions on the internet include some kind of medium that glazes the bead - but I'm not interested in beads that are using questionable chemicals. Keep it simple. Paper, white glue, string if you like (I have a few that I've wrapped string around for embellishment.)
If you're reading this and want to get involved, please drop me a comment. And I will let you know where to send the beads. This is an on-going project, so as of this date I have no deadline. But the project was proposed for an Exit Art exhibition, The Drop. So if it is accepted, which I will know in December, I will have a deadline to work towards.

loving the rain

Hmmmm. The water is still coming down and it's creating a lovely rhythm to the day. Time seems suspended. Especially as evening falls. A 3pm nap was a rare and beautiful thing. I spent most of the day working on Water Prayer, making beads from Yogi tea packets, researching some potential partnerships for exhibition and writing letters for funding and sponsorship.
I have to say the business of art thing isn't my thing. I worry a bit that the letters will remain written on my hard drive and not sent out where they can actually manifest something in the world. I realize that my propensity for dreaming takes more forms than I'm daily aware of. It is the same day dreaminess that allows me to escape the humdrum of life when it gets way too humdrum. I'm not telling - but we all have them. They are our own little secrets. Meant to stay that way. And sometimes worth a little cat got a bird in it's mouth smile. Just to keep everyone guessing.
Yesterday was Yom Kippur and I spent the day fasting and contemplating, though not in a particularly Jewish kind of way. Hindu chanting, Buddhist meditation and reading. A hot sauna. Still, time for contemplation is a blessing. By the end of the day I was burned out, with little energy or joy for even my favorite practice - chanting. But today I feel purified. Lighter of heart. And mind.

water inspiration

So many people complain about the weather. Especially rain. But the earth needs it. I discovered a few years ago, that slowing down in this weather is key. Our instinct in this fast paced world we live in, is to speed up. Run. But it doesn't keep you any dryer.
In the summer it's a bit easier to camp out on the porch, listen and watch the rain. But this time of year, the chill can be a drawback.
I've often told people who complain about winter that the key to enjoying it, is getting outside. Cross country skiing, snow shoeing, even just walking -- anything that gets your blood going fast enough to keep you warm so you can soak up some sun and fresh air.
It's true of rain too. We tend to burrow in, and lament the gloom. But taking a walk in the rain --listening to the drops on the umbrella, and the gush of waters whether in an overflowing stream or a city street -- can be a panacea. I like to sit in the car, let the windows glaze over in sheets of water and listen to the rhythm of the rain. I like to hear the wind turn the trees into showerheads. And find puddles in impossible places, like the hollow of a leaf.
It seems there's always either too much water or not enough. We only notice it's overabundance or it's lack. But I think this has been true since the beginning of time. Water is so vital to life.
I myself am even more aware of it since beginning the Water Prayer project - in which I am creating 108 prayer strands of 108 beads each, created of paper from consumer products that are water-dependant. But I like to think of the rain as a blessing, not a curse. Nature's not our enemy. And, as I'm sure, countless environmentalists can talk about much better than I can, it's precisely our attempt to control it that spins it further out of whack.
So rather than lamenting the rain and all the ways it may be putting a damper on daily life right now (not to mention the devestating effects of the recent hurricane and all the human suffering associated with it) I wonder how we can find blessings in the deluge - knowing that even what is washed away in violence makes way for rebirth and growth.

moments of realization

While I know that the trials and troubles of life are often what mold us most beautifully. Through the pain and dark night journeys of the soul we emerge into who we really are. But on a glooming Monday morning, back at the work which pays the bills and drains that soul, I have a moment of inspiration. I have spent years doing corporate work in which nothing is ever right or good enough, just as it is. But when I am working on my art, and teaching workshops, everything is just perfect exactly as it is. There is room for all of it, every aspect of it. Nothing is a redo. It's all birth and evolution. Death and reinvention. Composting and rebirth. Like the maple and birch who green and turn and fall and green and turn and fall again and again and again. The work we love is a blessing. The work we don't feels like a curse. Is it worth trying to infuse the difficult work with the essence of devotion to transform it? Or are we really meant to get down to the business of transforming ourselves and getting on with the work that is already devotion, and leave off with all this self made suffering? Is that what's at the core of this path to our hearts -- is it as easy as embracing fully who we really are? I hear the answer in the peace that settles over me. I think of Rumi: "Inside you there is an artist you do not know about... Say yes quickly, if you know, if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe". I return to the work of finding myself in the present moment.

A friend just offered these words of wisdom, garnered from a workshop she attended this weekend with Dr. Reggie Ray (www.dharmaocean.org). Don't push. Trust in whatever arises.

Bending to upright a fork that has fallen sideways in the dishwasher, a chant forms in my hands, in my heart: every moment, every movement is a prayer.

before the rains came

As promised, more pics, fewer words. Water running in a small stream and the great mother tree that I spend time sitting and meditating on in Buttercup Sanctuary, close to where I live.

torrents

Apologies for the pic-less posts of late. I will probably download some images later this evening and catch up tomorrow.
Rain is coming down in buckets, bless the deluge. The earth needs it. Unfortunately it's coming down so fast, she won't be able to soak it up as thirsty as she is, and will flood.
Is anyone else wondering what's going on around the planet? Hurricanes, earthquakes? I was kidding this morning saying it was the rapture. But I think the great mother is supremely pissed off at us for whacking everything so out of balance. We need to love her more. Worship the ground you walk on. Really, I mean it.
After a week of chanting, I'm more wound up than wound down. It breaks my heart. Breaks it wide open.
When I went over to Omega in the pouring rain today, I noticed that the title of Elisabeth Lesser's new book is "Broken Open" and it hit me in the heart, since I'd been walking around all week saying I felt like my heart was broken open, and I had no idea that was the title of her book, even though I was at the reading mid-week. (I am writing in run on sentences today.) It was just one of those synchronicities, like the poem I wrote about chanting last year around this time, which has a lot of one, one, all one's in it, and when KD's new cd All One came out, I was like, wow, how wierd. They were recording it last year right around the time I was playing with the poem, and feeling like crap because I had Lyme disease, and sad because I hadn't actually gotten to be a part of the kosmic kirtan posse.
After a Dance Your Bliss class with Rachel Fleishman, I melted down. Lay there in savasana just crying with the rain. Torrents down my checks. Heaving (heaven) chest. Silent (sacred) sobs. And I so wanted to stay with that and let it drain me out. But the moment comes and goes, everything changes in an instant. And Rachel and I headed for the sauna gabbing away.
The electric energy that has been pulsing in my body all week, nervous energy, excited energy, finally had it's outlet. Since I worked from home all week, I didn't get to karate classes, and feeling all that blocked up energy released, reminded me of what a blessing it is that I have the practice.
So many practices so little time. Those hours I spend counting the minutes at my day job just fly when I'm actually living. I really have to work on turning the day job into a practice -- a devotional practice -- something I keep thinking about when I'm not there. And seems particularly difficult to put into practice when I am.
But that's why they call it practice.

Today is the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashona, and although my actual spiritual practices lean more toward Buddhism and Hinduism, I welcome this time for contemplation. In honor of my ancestors and my parents, who still attend synagogue, I don't work, and try to remove myself as much as possible from the usual wheels of life.
Last night, as it turned out, was the first night of kirtan with Krishna Das at Omega, and as usual, my heart breaks open. It was a particularly small group: 120 people cancelled because Ram Dass wasn't going to be there due to illness.
It was just KD, Ty and a violinist, so it was really intimate and beautiful. Tonight I hope to go early and take some photos both before everyone gets there and after everyone leaves. I'm interested in exploring a bit how the space changes. It is so charged with energy during chanting, and so filled with bliss afterwards. I want to see what that looks like in a photograph if possible. How to capture it. Or what is actually reflected in the physical space.
I'm using this time to complete a piece that I've been playing around with for the last year or so. It's a chant/prayer/poem that predated the Water Prayer beads, and actually inspired them. Having written a poem about chanting, I wanted to create a strand of 108 prayer beads, and write the poem, one word per bead, upon them. The opening line is: to be one small note, rising in the throat of the universe. So written on the beads, from bottom to top, the poem rises as well.
I am now thinking that I will string the beads differently than you see here. I am toying with the idea of making a silver chain, which will contrast nicely with the paper beads. And perhaps add some small bells as well. I held the strand in my hands and to my heart while chanting last night, to imbue them with the energy of the names. The names of god being what one chants when chanting.
I am also reading Matthew Fox's "One River Many Wells" which really ties together the meditative, mystical and practical aspects of not only the world's great religions, but the spirituality of cultures from Africa to Australia, ancient and modern. It's a wonderful book to be reading at this time of year especially. I was first introduced to his work at Miriam's Well a few years ago, when I was working briefly with Susan and Richard Rosen.
I spent the afternoon communing with nature. There is an ancient tree strewn across a now dry stream bed that is wide enough to walk, sit and splay out upon, in Buttercup Sanctuary where I hike. And tried to follow some of the teachings talked about in Fox's book, sitting quietly alone.

a lull: composting time

I hardly know what to do with myself, now that I don't have a pressing deadline to meet with any of my art or jewelry. So the weekends are once again time for R&R, which leaves me feeling, well, disoriented. I know I've had this conversation with other artists before. It's composting time, that wierd uncomfortable place between projects that is actally in perfect keeping with the season at the moment.
There is so much I could be doing. Getting my house in order, cleaning up from the many piles strewn about during the past several months. But somehow this downtime leaves me feeling less and less like doing anything at all. And yet my mind is busier at times like these than when my hands are working. Total monkey mind. Even while I am chanting in my head.
I am trying to appreciate the space. Enjoy a nap. Spend more time brushing my cat. Dream while riding on the back of the motorcycle with nothing better to do than take in the breathtaking scenery and let my mind wander where it will. No matter that the additions to the house that I construct in my head will likely never break ground. Or that my resolve to clear out the house and create a less cluttered sanctuary may take years.
This is where fertility is seeded. Deep beneath the consciousness of intent and purpose. Who knows what will surface months from now because I took the time to do not much of anything today.