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!