Must be in the Blood

From a barren place, no desert ship in sight, He asked, “Do you get seasick?” I paused at the span of years since I last went sailing. “Um…” Seated on the bow, flying, ocean kisses all over my face… Harbor in the afternoon where I massacred an oyster in curious horror. She gifted me upon her death a perfect eight-millimeter miniature of a dusky moon on a nighttime sea. “Why do you ask?” was all I said. Casually lounging the waves with an otter and his abalone breakfast… Facing early extinction in a watery vacuum pulling me out, out of the cove, until with a bloody grip on a barnacled rock, I crawled up to air in gratitude. “Well, I love the ocean, “ He replied, “and I don’t think I ever asked…” Coral-replicating rivulets in copper evening sand, spread like big hands holding the fiery ball of sun… Driftwood being human art, with shells and seagull feathers dancing, Or blessing smoke, like incense over small beach gatherings… Holy stones and smooth glass jewels, whalebones and fossils so familiar, I can’t help but remember the web of tiny fetal fingers floating in that first cradle. “I felt sick, once when my brother was, on the boat, but that was all,” I concluded. Knots of kelp, seatree caress, ropes of gold in briny bondage… Expressionless sharks bearing the unknown in perfect teeth with perfect truth in their eyes… Crying to my Mother when I was lost, longing to drown again in her arms…wanting her there at my one true wedding when I finally found my way home. (If you were landlocked, said my brother once, I think you’d die!) “Soon,” my Love promised, “we’ll go sailing.” I could feel him smile. I may be a mermaid with legs.

Sweetness

What if I stopped fighting and fell into the vat of What Is? And instead of drowning, found myself filled with warm, orange honey… and it filled up every cell of the body, breathing itself just fine… no room for fear, because all of the within or without spaces were suddenly warm, orange honey. What if open eyes saw that everything, everything is, in fact, warm orange honey? No longing for sweetness when the tongue becomes what it craves. No avoiding the hollows when that is where warmth lives. No future of need when it has already become what yesterday is--- warm, orange honey. What would I do, what would I do in an endless universe of warm, orange honey? I couldn’t run from it hide from it have more of it or control it since it is me and I am it and so is everything else… an absolute abundance of warm, orange honey, in an infinite number of shapes, sizes and densities, all of them actually warm, orange honey.

Dusk

Nothing special this mild, March evening, light fading, walking, digesting; walking without my glasses, needing no detail to bring me wood smoke and perfume from someone’s clothes dryer. Could be any neighborhood, quiet, after dinner. Walking in the street because traffic is elsewhere, slowly, because I can. The bottoms of my shoes are thin. I feel intimate density, each step, thinking, This is how I love, this is how I love!

To us

Get used to being adored. It is only what you deserve. Pretend you are god, and you know so much that it’s more fun not to know. Don’t be surprised, when you step ahead, that the earth obediently turns under your feet; or that every time you open your eyes, you grace this space with color, line and form. Your power is such that a word or a tear can break my heart. And when you open yours, the entire universe rushes in to at last be home where it belongs.

Birthing Pool

Back in the desert, I used to dream of a place green all year, where I could not imagine drought except as an abstract concept. Awake now, the dream has granted me a grove where ocean meets the rain; persistent, subtle mists, and sprays and spates in sideways walls of wet. I wrap myself in plastic, to no avail, for a determined hike on muffled trails, skirting tiny bogs in open spaces, earth seeping back what moss and ferns have given. Every dissolving leaf or twig, every springing fungus exhales an ancient, ancient perfume of sharp, quick decay mixed with new, spring babyhood. After a while, my face runs with rainy sea, sweat or tears. I hear only my own heartbeat in this womb. Today, at the end of my labored swim up the hill, stripped of everything but love, light spears the end of the fir tunnel and opens the ocean cloud canopy with diamonds.

Motion Sickness

To overcome the dizziness of the world, first understand that you are a whirlpool of a raging river, a cyclone of an endless sky, a spiral of the code of being. Lie flat on the ground, the solid, still earth while you contemplate the fact that you’re spinning rapidly in space in a galaxy that swirls your helpless self into who-knows-what, in a universe expanding who-knows-where. Not only that! From tick to tock, the swing of the pendulum you make time with can make you very ill, indeed. So let go. You’ll only float in the center while you fly around your edge.

"Moonlight Fairy", oil on canvas, private collection

"Arctic Beauty", oil on canvas, private collection

"North Altar", oil on canvas

"The Artist and Her Father", oil on canvas, private collection

Education of an Artist

Technique and application of learned skill— very important. Basic knowledge of past achievements by illuminated dead, balanced with the desire to create something living on— why not? But the scent of your vision the taste of the hawk’s cry on canvas the feel of a universe pressing out, out from your heart goes without saying!

"Grandma's Cabin", oil on canvas, sold


Finding Voice

Many years in this guesthouse, there was a noisy place in the floor I tried hard to avoid, so as not to wake the sleeping people. Forgetting, one day, I stepped just there. The floor squeaked in surprise, causing someone to stir--! I froze in fear of… But a curiosity in the sound bade me test my weight again. The floor groaned in pain… someone opened an eye, so I stopped with unspoken apology, hovering. Until a secret joy in the gaze upon me placed my foot, firmly, on that vocal spot once more, and the floor crackled in anger! Someone sat bolt upright. And I bounced a few times, grinning at the awakened one while the floor laughed in delight, remembering my innocent self sitting, rolling, dancing in this singing place!

Tree Goddesses, oil on canvas, sold

Holy Leap

Go ahead, test the stability of the bridge between your-and-Self. Did you believe the chasm was as merciless as the dull death in your head? Did you think it would reward the courage of your wincing step with nothing more than a cold fall, an abrupt stop shaped like jagged rocks? I know you can’t see it, I know it has no logic, but go ahead, jump out, land with both feet! Swing your arms and dance across. Stomp and laugh, because a herd of elephants could not sway this bridge, suspended as it is from heaven, rooted as it is in earth.

HEART SHAPES

Walking the beach in a treasure day, I was telling my brother about stumbling upon heart shapes wherever I go (the shape of your face in my hands), and that my son once pointed out how frequently this happens (the shape of your hand on the small of my back), since I had quite a collection (the shape of your name on my tongue) of found heart-shaped things. Really, my brother said. (the shape of the space around your form) You know, it’s all in the patterns (the shape of things to come) that you recognize. And I stopped to pick up a golden, heart-shaped piece of agate, laughing. (the shape of love) Imagine that!

Back

"Dragonglow", oil on canvas, sold


Heal

In this necessary nightmare, wild wasteland of fallen angels and fractured wings, I step over my own spilled blood and hear the snap of fearful division, smelling heat of hate on the wind. Nothing seems to grow amid fortresses of illness, under layers of mental cancer and piles of our neglect. Nothing seems to flow through these huge dams of greed. So easy to succumb to the swelling of despair… But compulsive lies collapse gratefully, as do all things, into truth; through the ruins I see layers of time in canyon walls, the pattern of pulse through all the apparent heart failure. There are signs of what moves underneath, ancient evidence immune to doubt. Thirsty, heedless of bites and stings, I lie on the parched bed of original flow and put my ear and my naked belly to this earth. Listeners, feelers in the desert know the ebb and flow of silent subterranean current, washing clean the wounds, mending the breaks and cooling the fever of fear. Even here, I heal in the place where sea meets sky; even here I am at home.

Back

Roses

How many deaths does it take to get to heaven? If someone told me five years back that I’d never left—but no, I needed more dying. I had to play one more kind of fool and step off another cliff, with a different-colored rose in my teeth. Even upon impact, in the midst of the latest shattered role, Love was the only thing that ever made sense. I’d find myself somehow resurrected, walking the path to the top of the next ridge, tasting a thorny stem. Again. Last time, the fall was so long as I looked from the edge, I just knew it went straight to hell. I wanted to sit forever with the view in sharp relief and a dead flower for companionship. Grace had other ideas. I swear I was pushed. The fall was so long that I had time to do somersaults and twists and a complete review of many lives. I had time to catch myself in surrender, even before my sudden landing in your arms, my rose safe in your teeth beneath your laughing eyes.

"Comfort", oil on canvas, private collection

The Path of Devotion

Maybe midlife, and I’m still trying to hide the worst of the scars, while forgetting, more and more, what they look like. The world doesn’t care, and toughly, tenderly breathes me, in each moment, bringing stories and pictures, green grass and the smell of wet cedar. Even when I imagined my abandonment or my prison, the world arose with me each morning and lay down to rest or restlessness with me each night. Obligingly, It became the door I locked or the key in my hand, it loves me that much. When I wanted something to break other than glass, life brought me, unquestioningly a whole procession of breakable things and promises and events. Did I need layers to tear off in grief? It dramatically cried large, ripping sobs, rocked back and forth with me in isolation on the saltwater sea in my eyes. Had I honestly wanted to drown, it would have shaped itself exquisitely around me that way, rushed into my lungs and every pore, until I was perfectly saturated. It loves me that much. Form after form, thought after thought, age after age is this devotion. I must have felt it, somewhere, deeply. I must have known it was wiser than I. There has always been some tiny shrine for me to go, to see if this is true… it loves me so much.

"Canyon Goddess", oil on canvas, sold


Aquarius

I am the Ocean's daughter. In my dream, the water has finally come. I've descended through ashes, through the portal of my own footprint into the underworld. Risen from your breath and bled from your eyes, I have carved new lines on the beautiful, ancient face always cast up at the sky. I am the lover-destroyer leaning upon the greatest walls of stone and steel, patiently filling every flaw, caressing away the hardest shell from the tender, molten heart of this blessed Earth, whom I carry to build upon her womb and fruit the hills and plains. No bridge can span the width, no dam can halt the flow of this current. I am the libation that cannot be grasped, but of which you are ever born; I will relax in your cupped hands, conform to the shape of your mouth, bathe away fear and float the innocent within and upon me. I sing to you in the rain and rivers, rock through the waves as your primal lullaby...the touches may be small as mist or engulfing as a tide; give and take by give and take, they change the shape of this universe. In my dream, the sun enters the day through the West. Water has split the great land in two; there are new shallow seas webbed by streams and canals carrying boats filled with fruit and rugs, herbs and animals of perennial wisdom. I wade the late turquoise of afternoon where the shoreline heals the wounds and the voices are few and full. Aquarius carries me on his strong back tipping the vessel from then to now. Empty your cup; pour it out as an offering.

"Mussels and Cherries", oil on canvas, sold

"Creation", oil on canvas, sold

"Orangina", oil on canvas, sold

"Emerald Afternoon", oil on canvas, sold

"Flight", oil on canvas, sold

"Grass Lady", oil on canvas, sold


"Elemental Woman", oil on canvas, private collection