Sacred Art Burial Ground

I’ve been feeling the onset of autumn for weeks now, with cool mornings and nights, dropping apples and touches of color in the leaves.


Most of what I imagined I’d accomplish this summer remains of course undone. I now plan projects that will be more easily done when things in the garden, yard and woods die down. Tying up the wild blackberry and rose to make arches will be a thorny affair, and there is always the threat of that poison ivy. But longer sleeves and heavier clothes will make it less dangerous.

In concert with the Year of Letting Go, I have been dreaming and scheming a project called Sacred Art Burial Site for old art of mine that I’d like to clear out, in hopes of making room for new ideas as well as opening up space in the house.

Across the road, we own a piece of property that is unused, but for the woods it keeps, the deer trails, wildflowers and dappled shade. I go there a few times a year just to sit. It’s not far enough away from the road to be quiet, but it is a kind of secret place perfect for a tree house or a club house if you were a kid. And a cemetery for art if you are me.

I have been collecting things from around the yard all summer. A kind of clean up of the rusted things I have over the years scattered about to create interesting though decrepit focal points. They’ve never quite amounted to what I’d intended anyway. But will be perfect in setting the stage for art burial.

I sometimes chastise myself for all the things I collect. It’s a compulsion really. But whenever I am around other artists who work with natural materials as I do, I realize we are a band, a community. Not so much hoarders as sensitive souls who connect with the processes of decay and the wabi sabi of cast off, found and decomposing things.

When these odd findings I’ve been saving for seemingly no reason suddenly become useful and not only that but essential to the creation of a work of art, I am secretly triumphant.

I am planning to videotape the creation of the Sacred Art Burial Ground and perhaps even a sacred ritual event on Halloween or Dia de los Muertes. Certainly I’ll take photos as well.

If it seems a kind of gruesome project to some, to me it’s more about natural processes again, a constant theme in my work. Transition, transformation, transmutation. Seasons in nature, life and art.

Creating with Nature

On Saturday I spent the day outdoors making things. A simple sentence, a simple notion, a watershed experience.


How often do we spend an entire day at the computer? And how do we feel afterwards? Inspired? Dreamy? Full of new ideas? Hardly. But spend a day outdoors and something catches fire in your heart, your mind, your spirit.

There was nothing fancy about the Woodlanders Gathering in Warwick New York this weekend. But everything imaginal and wonderous. Rustic makers of furniture and art, curious creative souls who shared ideas and materials under two tents at a camp site on the grounds of the Warwick Conference Center. It was the middle of the woods, and the heart of the world. A campfire, a tarp filled with goodies for swapping: books, branches, bones. For natural material enthusiasts, it was a candy store for heart and mind. And so much more.

Dan Mack is the founder and fire behind the Woodlanders Gathering, now in its 18th and 19th years in the Midwest and here on the East Coast. His imaginal wood carvings from found Hudson River driftwood, furniture building expertise and generous spirit of sharing, have created an event that is as much, if not more, about community as it is about being introduced to new skills and ideas. It’s radical in gentler way than Burning Man. Complete with its own Wicker Man.

I’d been lurking on the virtual site for years and finally found myself there in body. I reconnected with Lynn Hoins a poet I’d met some years ago at a workshop I gave on making time for art. Lynn opened up worlds about journal writing for writers and non-writers alike, in the space of a short hour.

Others showed us how to make Maori healing tools and systrums (an ancient egyptian rattle form). Dan’s driftwood was on hand with small carving knives, as were boxes of blank cards and Stanley tool boxes full of small nature finds from which one could begin to make personal Tarot.

There was a flute making workshop and mead-making botanical walk.

But mostly there was an atmosphere of love. Of earth and art, of people and process.

Lynn Hoins put it beautifully when she said: “It’s like finding your tribe.”

The Woodlander’s Gathering is on my calendar for next year, but for the whole weekend next year, camping gear and all.

Flourish Vid: My Museum

It's been sometimes that I last posted about magic stuff. Nothing much actually, just to share this flourish vid by Jeremy, the "apprentice" of Huron. Nice and elegant..I think he has grasped the essence of The Virt's style!This is Smoke & Mirrors - Green Edition. According to D&D, Green means Retro & Eco-friendly. Nevertheless, beside the excellent quality of the deck, the flourish is always

the long slow languid reveal

it's another beautiful day in paradise.


i think this may be my most favorite time of year with hot days, cool mornings and nights.

and now that i've found a rhythm to my days, all is well.

it takes time to find a routine that works for us. especially when we are used to a day job, complete with commute, our days and our schedules are pretty much decided for us.

but when the day is our own, with no expectations other than those we set for ourselves it can be a challenge. given the blank space of time others load up on doctor's appointments, but that's the last place i want to be when the time is my own. so i struggled through a week or so of unsettled, what do i do with myself today, not even realizing that the rhythm would create itself out of nothingness, if i just gave it a little time.

did i mention i'm not good at making plans, appointments, and the like? i prefer an organic revealing. i like to see what happens. it's not that i'm not self directed or motivated. i am. but not in the obsessive compulsive way of our western society. i've been there. done that. to do lists, checked off methodically. it's just not my way. i don't find any joy in it, because it feels like a grammar school assignment given by a bad tempered teacher to keep kids in line and on their toes.

i want joy. it's that simple really. i don't see any reason not to enjoy life. so i find that even the tedious can become pleasant if approached in a gentle embracing way. which by the way, is not my way naturally. i have to work a little at it. i was raised to be anxious on dictims like: not to decide is to decide.

i am trying more and more to trust in the cycles of the seasons, the days and the self.

i'm just not always patient with them. the yard is a mess, the house is peeling inside and out. my husband, jokes that the porch often looks like appalacia. but there is creative energy to it all. a wabi sabi of natural process, and the beauty of decay.

i love old things. the patina. the cracks and the chips. the use. the love. the wonder.

when larry and i were recently married by ram dass in maui, larry asked him if he had to meditate, and what if anything he had to do. he was asking student to teacher for guidance and ram dass said he didn't have to do anything, he just had to live his life.

this is how we develop our patina i imagine, our cracks and chips. but more importantly, love and wonder. tears well up in my eyes in a moment of grace, a glimpse of how everything is exactly as it is meant to be and the overwhelming beauty of this and every moment. the ladies sitting chatting at the table next to me. the loud mouthed man with the huge pot belly speaking too loudly on his cell phone, storming out the door to find the phone number of the local pharmacy, and now more quietly walking back in, just as his order arrives at the table.

in this small cafe in this small town just miles from home i have found my pace. a morning cup of coffee, a delicious croissant, and my little fashion accessory, this bright red vivienne tam hp net book that i type away on happily, reconnecting to words, to myself, to the universe.

and so another pattern begins, a day falls into its thrum, and life unfolds in its own time.

i am reminded of a note i wrote to myself in the first days of a job i loved terribly and hoped would last forever: this is not a race, this is not a test.

may your day be filled with the magic medicine of your own true rhythms, rhymes and revealings.

the year of letting go

back in january when i deemed this the year of letting go, i had no idea how true that would come to be. literally, let go of my day job at the end of february, the letting go is an organic process, filled with sudden insights, and lingering questions.


last week in preparation for a yard sale, i had to clean out the garage of years of collected debris. we use the garage as a dumping ground for all sorts of unwanted objects and debris. yesteday, taking 2 construction bags full to the town dump and tossing them into the bulk waste was a revelation. i actually felt myself lighten and lift.

for the last several days i've been rolling around the thought of taking the next year to clear out, and clean out the 1840's eye brow colonial we call home. to lighten our load of the possessions we bump into at every turn, or can't find when we come to need them. and of course to blog about the process.

my husband spends most weeks commuting on an airplane. and until my release from full time work, home was a place we rested our heads only 2 nights and 1 full day a week, leaving little time to edit and downsize our ever changing collections.

mostly with that kind of schedule one has to shut down to the ever growing list of things needing to be done and just accept things as they are. accepting things as they are is a great spiritual practice, but shutting down isn't. and when reality finally comes to rest it can be overwhelming.

the plaster ceiling in the living room is like the hachet in the basement stairwell of a hans christan anderson story that prevents a girl from descending the stairs in fear it will fall and kill her. my reading chair is just out of range of the inevitable crash. the plaster is cracking on the walls, mold is growing, paint peeling, wood rotting.

and still i shop.

two days ago i needed a little thrift therapy and as the bill tallied up a clutching feeling gripped my stomach. not over the money. i'd gone in with a mission: to find interesting ways to organize jewerly and art supplies, but of course i got side tracked. i am not exactly sure what it is that grips me so about old, used objects. of course if i ponder it long enough i can trace back the want to a memory or even another object i have just like it (another compulsion!), but the overwhelming desire to own confuses me. my head clouds like a cramped closet, an overstuffed attic.

a few days ago a friend who cleans houses recommended to start at the top and work your way down. when cleaning. which brings up interesting thoughts in relation to mind, intention and how we make our way in this physical world, our bodies and our lives. meditation comes to mind.

as we don't have a basement in the house, my studio and most of my clothing are relegated to the upstairs 3rd floor. a kind of attic, it often becomes another kind of dumping ground, the polar opposite to the garage, for things i treasure and can't find a place for. this includes everything from the deer bone and feathers i use in my art work, to jewerly making tools and supplies, a lifetime's collection of postcards and vintage clothing, and way back in the closets, larry's and my collections of pooh and simpson's memoribilia from years of yard saling when we lived in los angeles.

in boxes since we moved back to new york almost 10 years ago, i have been wanting to move them down to the kitchen and out the door for years now. and having just last night tackled my studio to make room for this summer's yard sale finds, i think there is a clear path from their place in the closet, down the stair, and out. and it occurs to me that often the biggest obstacle to clearing out the boxes - in our homes and our minds - is having a path of access that is clear and easy. the fact that these things have made their way to the back with so much protection packed around them, is a side fact of interest. are we saving them or stuffing them away? and how can we lightly lighten our loads, without torturing ourselves? how can we be gentle with a process that is cumbersome?

i'm always astonished at my mother's ability to simply get rid of things. her seeming lack of sentimentality over objects that seem so dear to me. but dearness changes. and as i sink into the year of letting go, i wonder how i can keep myself from acquiring more new possessions as the old find their way on.

just this weekend at the yard sale i had, a man reached into a container of detritus metals i hadn't bothered to look through and before i knew it an old vintate hose nozzel that may have been my grandfather's was gone for a quarter. that night, beset with regret i bought 3 from a seller on etsy for $10.

letting go means letting go of self judgment too.

so stick, or bear with me as i continue to process and blog about possessions, obsessions and the year of letting go.

interesting side note? i just finished reading the romanian: story of an obsession by bruce benderson. winner of france's prestigious literary prize, the Prix de Flor. It is an autobiographie erotique.



post script. 4 boxes of pooh memorabilia, and a box of video and 1" tapes of ad commercials made it down the stairs to the living room. i separated the boxes into thrift store donations, donations to a children's hospital and a box for friends with children. i kept a handful of the books. now to get them out the door and into the car!

Quintessential Summer Moment

It is a cloudy sleepy Sunday morning. I woke with the thought that if I were vacationing in Maine, I might get up and go to town, buy a cup of coffee, some muffins and bring them back to eat outside. So I got up, drove into town and pretended I was on vacation.


Now I’m sitting on my front porch, lemon poppy seed muffin in hand, thinking about the elusive quality of summer and vacations.

It always seems the quintessential moments don’t happen until just before time is up. This week, autumn hangs in the air. It has been feeling imminent to me for weeks. The newly cool nights, the too early apples dropping to the ground with a thud, an idea looming in my head that September is not months away, but less than weeks.

Still. This past Friday night, the bon fire I’ve been dreaming about for years lit up the yard and my heart. The fire pit has lain in wait all that time, slowly filling with sticks from spring clean up. Now a circle of ash, a clean slate.

And this weekend the yard sale I’ve been thinking about for just about as long finally popped up in the driveway as if the seeds had just taken all those summers to sprout. This happens in the garden too. Mostly with newly distributed weeds, but sometimes from old seed packets thrown willy nilly to the wind with a wish.

Both are quintessentially summer. And as I write those words, rain drops start to fall in what I hope won’t mean a mad dash to get everything in the garage before a quintessential summer storm.

Still. This moment, even with the threat of rain, feels like summer in a way that is hard to to put into thoughts, harder still, words. It is a long ago feeling that lives in my marrow. No where to go. And despite mounting piles of dishes and laundry, to do lists that never end and dreams that need tending, there is nothing to do. The moment feels full just as it is. Riper than ripe. And yet not ready to pull from the vine.

My muffin too is dwindling and the closer it gets to crumbs, the more heightened my desire. I think of the Arthurian tale of a weaving that unravels even as it is woven, and wonder how my muffin might spontaneously regenerate, and my coffee become a bottomless cup. How life itself is always unraveling and reweaving itself at the same moment. There’s no use trying to catch the fast fraying edges. There is only the moment at hand. Its quintessential nature changing even as we note it.

I check the weather online, for an hour by hour accounting, the chance of precipitation in percentage. But when I look at the sky I know the truth. I feel it in my bones. For the moment at least, the yard sale is over.

Post Script. 10:42 am.
Since it looked like rain was going to foil the yard sale anyway, I cleaned out the garage and set it up for a Year Round Yard Sale. So now, throughout the remaining moments of summer, the imminent Autumn and into next summer it's a change of venue at the same address, Yard Sale in residence in the garage. And, I think ORBS are planning a visit today.

Where's the SA Node?

Just heard this story today.One houseman is not happy that he was being extended in Orthopedic posting.Medical MO: "Why did it happen?"HO: "This is totally unreasonable. They were asking me something unrelated to orthopedics and they failed me just because I answered wrongly!"MO: "Oh that's bad. What did they ask you?"HO: "They asked me where the SA (sinoatrial) node is!"MO: "Oh...that's like

ORBS on hiatus

ORBS are on summer break, relaxing at home in the hammock. We were not able to take them with us to Maui for our wedding and all-too-short honeymoon. (Too many clothes, too little time.)
Earlier this summer, in late June at my Omega residency I was able to collect bags full of cartons from the Omega Cafe and dining room. All are now on the front porch awaiting their meditative turn at rinsing, cutting, and rolling into their next incarnation as ORBS.
As Larry spends so much time travelling and we have a weekly commute to the NYC airports, ORBS will be popping up at LaGuardia and JFK sometime soon. And they will be with me at Menla Mountain for a Labor Day retreat with Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman.
In the meantime they have meditated on the meaning of their life, and have determined that small is better. So rather than focusing on becoming the World's Largest, they are multiplying in various sizes, colors and shapes in hopes of going forth into the farthest reaches of the world.
And coming home to rest in your corner of the world to inspire and delight you. Stay tuned for more info on how to purchase ORBS and make your own!

Morning "Live Show"

Ward rounds are usually a 3-level thing: Earliest round by housemen at 7am, then by medical officer at 8am, then specialists will come at around 9 or 10am.If the ward MO/ Specialists are nice and friendly, the HOs are blessed. But more often than not, if HOs are placed (or abandoned) in a ward with "malignant" superior, then, good luck to them.The morning round will become a torture, a daytime "