starting and sifting the offerings of over

i'm moving things.
i'm moving things and organizing things and shifting things in the become yourself space, in the sun gallery studio while we teach there, in my self as i face the ocean.
i'm still not comfortable in my own skin.
i keep manifesting places to be and people to love me and when they do i somehow remain too much--to practiced at the persona of myself and not enough my comfortable self.
i don't know how to be comfortable as myself.
i don't know how to get out of my stories of myself and just be.
still.
as i close the doors on this master's degree in transformative art, i don't know how to just be.
being is all there is to human.
and today i admit i don't know how to drop into the human being of my self.
self.
self.
self.
self.
self.
self.
self.
self.
self.
self.
i sit in the supply closet at become yourself and sift and sort and take things to the offering spot for the adjoining studios.
i do not know how to love myself yet. still.
and this is impossible...to teach or share or be for another until one can come from knowing how to do this for one's self.
i share the journey outloud as a means of confession.
i continue to need to confess....

the church of the farmer's market

we started life today at the "please love me a little more quietly--and preferably after 9:30" request--waking, knowing today was our day to hang our art and be in our space together thinking and dreaming and imagining the what's next. we moved slowly--into the unfolding day--and decided to attend the church of the farmer's market in jack london square. we found a gleeful elizabeth on her birthday--heading off to hang glide and survive. we nuzzled our mentor, there, at the jewelry booth with the dealer that adorns her with the exact hue of turquoise blue that is the reverberating truth of the woman that holds such powerful circles. we bought stuff to make dinner--almonds, berries, the gorgeous pasta, some carrots and other such things. we walked by the water. we looked out in dreams. we shared stories of theme songs and imagined the become yourself solid gold dancers. we dreamt womanfire out loud and talked about the pussycatdolls i don't need a man song as if it would one day be true. we fell into a gallery and then dreamed aloud the kinds of men we're looking for...without really looking for them. we came home to become yourself, had the last of ms. aksen's initial circle offering for lunch, and then fell into nap and laundry respectively. we woke, went on another outing to see the island beyond the island between the here and the there of the airport. we found the glass house by the water that makes for a beautiful teaching space. we circled back home and hung the artwork we've collected from the friends we've bought it from. we harvested the basil from the happy plant that lives on our counter. we hung yemaya on the front door. we put up cate white's dirt clods and rainbow piece. we hung ms. aksen's portal. we put up the mirror and moved the little secretary under it. we ground the basil into pesto with pine nuts and yummy hard luscious cheese. we set the table and lit the candles. we each read a poem before the meal. we ate and decided the meal was so delightful that we needed wine--from the silver fairy cups we both grew up with. we toasted this delightful day of unfolding dreams. we adjourned to the gallery/studio space and made collages into this late on this night. and it was a perfect unfolding of a lovely day of artful touches to an otherwise ordinary life. *this* is transformative art. living life creatively, making the most of every ordinary moment, sharing deeply from the well of what is loved. we decide dinner party instead of overwhelming event for next week. we continue to unfold into the grand of the opening.

the only upright card in the reading...

when i was 23? the cards that leapt off the shelf in the groovy seattle bookstore began to teach themselves to me. that was 21 years ago....
my deck, ralph blum's norse tarot, has been a constant companion since then and i turn to it when i'm ready to hear some unadulterated truth. i do not read commercially--or do any of my spiritual/metaphysical stuff for money--but over the years, i have shared reading and intuition and stories about what i see with friends who can use what they can classify as wisdom for their own situations--and leave the rest as my own particular world view. but tonight, i turn to my own cards to find what they have to say to me.
today, we showed up as the black hut with some borrowed materials from sun--tablecloths an old wallpaper sample book--and some new materials we purchased on behalf of spread kindness, and we did our art thing in the wind with the families assembled in the pittsburgh family center. maria and her family brought backpacks and cupcakes and ideas about kindness--and we arrived as the black hut and did our own personal brand of irreverent sharing of art materials and truth. truth as we see it, at any rate. truth, the way we can share it out loud in banter and joy and sting and bite and overwhelming love. the abbot and costello versions of just sayin' it like it is.
in my little blurb about who we be, i said, after mark's eloquent explanation of kindness, my little piece about sometimes we are and sometimes we aren't--and extended my invitation to make a mess. and then the families came forward and made their prayer flags with ideas about what kindness means to them--and we laughed and made and enjoyed and got messy when the wind wanted to blow the plates into and onto the bodies of the people, all dressed up to receive their backpacks.
there were lots of moments--beautiful moments--when we were all who we were in a natural conglomeration of givers and receivers and sharers and art makers and mess makers and laughers and enjoyers. and then we exhausted all the photo ops and recorded all the "what kindness means to me" soundbites for youtube. and then we went for coffee.
and we drank coffee.
and then we showed up like ourselves and steered the conversation into uncomfortable places of truth and dare.
and we were who we were.
and we laughed and told truths we might otherwise have kept hidden, deep, in the dirty corners of our own psyches.
but because we invoke this sacred clown--who tells the truth to the naked emperor and makes possible the rich and beautiful tapestry of levity for the profound, and lays open all the wounds still oozing and pusssssing under the surface of things, we were all able to find some way to be and laugh and ease up on this earnest kindness thing.
we all want to show up good in the world, it seems--
but sometimes we aren't.
and when we aren't,
we're better.
it is always like mae west said...
and invoked the sex goddess and laughed out loud and spoke in my southern accent to soften the blows of the goooosh and whooosh of truth zinging across the table and it layed some people way more open then they might have gotten otherwise.
and this, i suppose, is good.
it was good for me, at any rate.
and so i thought about all this, when i met someone i could have bedded if he smelled better and cruised around oakland thinking if i was brave enough to find some event to attend and meet someone's eyes across a crowded room and before that stood outside the studio of my captain to casually invite him for a drink if he had opened the door either one of both times i knocked or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or...
the truth is, even in the starting with over, i have know idea how to do what is next in this part of the unfolding future of my life.
and so i sit in the tiki bar at the end of my street and i draw on the bracelet i've made myself from a cardboard tube reclaimed after pulling all the tape or string or...what is this cardboard tube from? i forget.
but i doodled on it, as if my magic markings would make it beautiful.
and i looked as my dear friend and medium posted the pictures of us--me in my large gifted t-shirt--looking matronly and wide as i laugh out loud in the pictures of us being us at the spread kindness event.
i am not a sex symbol anymore.
i am not going to find my next someone looking like a starlet.
it will have to be me this next one wants...
me, the wide way i am now--
no longer wide eyed--
no longer young--
and even before that, it will have to be me that wants and loves and adores myself enough to allow for standards to replace desperation.
i do not have to bed men who don't smell good just because i want to feel desired....
oh, god--these confessions of the pubic sort are...
what?
self-indulgent?
where is that line?
between sharing the real? and creating the drama? and indulging the self in ways that are not transpersonal?
transpersonal...
this is the idea for the art, life, sharing, writing, being alive in public...
that my journey is a mirror and a microcosm and a connecting link in the stories that spin off from here--
me, the biggest butt of my own jokes...
fat bottom girls played from the juke box in the tiki bar tonight, where i met the bartender and we shared stories of the neighborhood.
i thought of the gorgeous queen who penned the words, sang them out, stairwayed his way up and down heaven--isn't that what the club was called in soho? where he was reputed to be? down in the dungeons of ecstatic yes? where there were whips and chains and pain to be enjoyed by all those who like that sort of thing with bravery enough to move their fantasies out of the fantastic realm and into the twentieth century? it was the twentieth century when freddy mercury was doing his beautiful thing?
it's the twentyfirst now.
i arrive home after spilling my second drink in such a way that i felt comfortable to drive the block back home.
i come into our BECOME YOURSELF space and light the candles for the prayers i'm praying for myself and others these days.
i sit at the black hut reading table and lay out the cards in the way my grandmother showed me.
she taught me solitaire.
a hundred different forms of solitaire.
i used her games to teach me the cards when they first gave themselves to me--way back there in time.
i layed them out--pulled out the major arcana as they fell out of the deck.
the one and only upright card in the major arcana is the fool.
i am the fool again--
again at my beginning--
heading out to meet the new initiating teachers in my unfolding world.
i am, again, the fool in my own deck--
the sacred clown--
the abbot? to raven's costello? or are we both the fat ones?
fat bottom girls you make the rockin' world go round....

performance art? women's spirituality?

performance poetry? performance? ceremony? ritual? margaret spoke--in a final blessing--"it is done"--for the thesis--just turn it in. then, we talked about the future. a phd at ciis? in women's spirituality? "let's get honest," she says in her life leveling way, "that's what you're REALLY doing...". i consider. i feel so close to what is possible for myself and my life in the black hut. i see what is unfolding at BECOME YOURSELF. i navigate this divorce thing with the support of a creative community. i look out the window at the container gardens in the shared courtyard of a whole community of artists. i am close...where are the cigars? i consider. i consider. i consider the man in the opposite kitchen in the yellow shirt turning on the knobs of his gas stove. i am writing again. i am writing the first blog entry since the last blog entry i will never get to take down? for the computer that is no longer mine. disappeared on the day--the june 30th day of completing the completable. i am complete. is this true? am i complete with my master's program? with my marriage? with this moment in this time at this window looking out onto this little corner of the world? it is curious to be writing again--and writing about whatever comes. i was trying to describe this to the poet i live with. she and i share poetry in all the awkward moments of trying to figure out how to stop talking about things that don't matter. we go to our shared library where we have co-mingled our sacred books and we pluck what is ready to be spoken. tonight, ee. i look at his picture on the cover of his 100 selected poems. i look to see who selected them. ee himself? i consider, if i saw him on the bus, would i have known the depth of him? what do poets do for their day jobs? i consider. i consider stories and ideas and dreams and the uncashed check for $25 for winning the poetry contest--the chaparral poets--proving to myself that poets do, sometimes, get paid. i still have the first $25 i earned as a poet--or i never had it--as i never cashed the check. is having the check the same as having the money? i think not. i consider. we are nearing the end of our art teaching summer camp gig at sun. we will not renew our relationships in on-going ways there. it is bittersweet--like all of life. like chocolate. like my husband being in cabo with our children for the next seven days. i consider the bath. i consider the bar with the dusty blow up frog on the roof--close enough to walk home. i consider the bed--cozy and waiting. i consider that i have never just dated anything for very long--that i am one for falling in love with love and the one i'm with. i consider that i do not know how to start over--and that knowing how or not is not keeping me from having to start over. starting over. starting with over. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. yes. a theme for the blog.

oh, god of second chances...

and so there is opportunity to begin again, and a class assignment to have a blog, read others, make comments. and so i revive what i began the very first night of the jfku experience as it made it self up with me. i begin after coming to this part of the end--this beginning of the end of the gradual school journey. god, i am so dramatic. i am always talking about beginnings and endings as if they are somethings--some threshold, which i suppose they are--some way of starting something. gotta be starting something, gotta be starting something. it's interesting the way the brain works now--with youtube videos and the ding, clang, ring of bells and the sounds, always the sounds, of the ambient noise of my surrounding life. i think of it all in terms of transformative art. i am forever talking about john cage. i like the whoosh and boom of it. i like the sounds of the songs that can not be sung as songs. i like the web of interconnection punctuated by footsteps down a long hallway while a noisy keyboard tries to keep up with the synapses firing their sing song nothingness as play. meaningless play, that means everything.

i am spending my days with my collaborator at the sun gallery in hayward turning 6 and 7 and 8 year olds onto transformative art.

there are lots of old school teachers who taught it their way that sort of hang around wishing we were more obviously structured--or so i imagine.

and there are kids and parents who get their own kids and just need and want a place to let their young artists come alive.

and there's us. arriving in my painted mobile studio. raven carrying one of his many animals. we arrive, sit in circle, be ourselves, do what we do, open the cupboards, provide inspiration and permission, and notice the flow of energy that comes up from these 21st century kids.

they are smarter, as they arrive, than we will ever be.

i should speak for myself.

i watch them put themselves together, replay for us what they've heard at home, find their amazement at the answer, which is always (if they're asking me), yes. yes. yes, you can do that. yes, you can make this. yes, you can use this. yes. yes. yes. yes. and no, i'm not going to tell you how to do this, how to make this, but if you ask what you're making how to make it, it will tell you.

i say this.

i say this often.

i say this multiple times a day.

i notice that i am forever in the play of this.

i notice *this* as transformative art--whatever this is--some combination of yes, permission, freedom and everyday art materials and the story journey that takes place privately in the act of making inside each precious being who journeys toward making. these story journeys are sometimes shared--sometimes evident--but always recorded in the making of the making of the thing of the thing.

it is always collaboration between the hands and the imagination freed and the space that sets the stage for this freedom.

What is Transformative Art?

Transformative art is an individual or group expression of the body, mind, soul and spirit as they transition through life. Transformative art connects the creative doer with the inner and outer worlds of the self and the other. It is through this expression and creativity that conscious awareness is opened, leading to deeper wisdom, health and balance.

Welcome

Woohoo! Thanks, Elizabeth. Next stop, what IS transformative arts??? :-)