misplaced mama

tings I probably could, but glad I don’t have to live without these days:

Trader Joe’s Sunflower Seed Butter. It’s filled with cane juice, but I could care less. It’s a creamy, rich, sweet delight.

Goat Yogurt. Any brand of plain is so delectable. Vanilla is good but its super sweet and I like my yogurt slightly sour. (spoonful of the above butter in the plain version is heaven.)

Bok Choy. Those greens are just the bomb. In chicken soup, stir-friend noodle dishes or just steamed, Bok Choy is a crispy and leafy healing food as well as a super-aphrodisiac. (I wish)

Raw Organic Walnuts. Crushed and crumbled in my yogurt or sprinkled on a goat cheese covered bagel, with a drizzle of honey. Straight from the bag. In mush (what we call oatmeal around these parts). In a salad. . Plus I think my big sister told me they were the nuts that helped reduced swelling in the body. I’ll take some of that.

Dagoba Organic and Free Trade Chocolate Bars. Holy shit. The New Moon and the Lavender are so Divine. There is a chili pepper one and it a bit too intense for me. I’m sure all you need is a little bit to feel the high, but I am the type that eats the whole bar in less than an hour (okay, ½ hour). A little chocolate at a time? Please. Dagoba makes a bar form of sex.

Soy Delicious “Little Buddies” soy ice cream sandwiches in mint. These are a take on the traditional vanilla ice cream and chocolate mushy-cookie sandwich. I have to say I like these better. The worst thing about not eating any cow dairy is the ice cream and these have helped my withdrawal. They come in vanilla and peanut butter, too. I like to get them in peanut butter so Bill can’t have any and I can eat them all (he’s allergic to peanuts).

Shea Butter. In the desert it’s all about the buttering up. You can get bulk amounts of organic and Fair Trade here for a fraction of the price you pay in retail stores. This stuff is good for every crease and crevice. I even use it in my hair.

Dr. Hauschka lipstick in warm burgundy. These products are so pure. They have a whole line of skincare products and make-up and they list all their ingredients on the website. Unfortunately, they are not listed in this database www.ewg.org, a project of the Environmental Working Group (which I am also obsessed with) that rates all your products for levels of toxicity and cancer causing ingredients. I don’t know what Dr. Hauschka products aren’t included in the database, but as far as I am concerned they are the only ones I feel good putting on my face in these days (affording them is another thing).

Buffy The Backslayer Bar. I don’t know how I ever lived without this. It’s this thick creamy bar filled with cocoa butter, shea butter, bits of almond, but of crushed aduki beans, ground rice, and yummy essential oils. It’s handmade, as all their products are. I use it to exfoliate. It works like sandpaper on my dry skin yet feels like silk. It smells like a vacation on the beaches of Thailand. It’s good for about 3-4 uses.

Sun and Moon yoga pants. These are cotton with a tight weave so they really suction everything in while remaining so ridiculously comfortable. I have worn them 7 out of 10 days this month, I swear. They have the charka centers hand painted up either side of the leg. Perfect flare at the ankle. Good rear view, especially when worn snug. Great for yoga and anything else

Be Present yoga pant. Totally different than Sun and Moon, yet like them, these are more than just a yoga pant. These are made from this amazingly stretchable, breathable, fashionable fabric. They come long or short and mine have an embroidered pink lotus on the butt. Bill has a pair that he wears to his day job as a building professional. They are durable and his ass looks hot.

American Apparel T’s and skirts. Sweat shop free, made in downtown L.A. Sexy clothes made from all cotton. Even though they market hard to the young urban and hip, these clothes are perfect for mamas who want to ware pajamas all day…. yet still feel young urban and hip. All their clothes feel like the oldest, softest T-shirt you have every owned. They’re about simple cut and vibrant color, both of which are my concerns when looking for clothes. They have this awesome, non-clingy halter dress that would actually work for me to breast feed in. I would be exposing a bit of boob, but might as well flaunt it while I still have them. I call American Apparel good karma clothes. It just feels good to not wear clothes made by slave kids not much older than my own daughter. I feel ghettofab in American Apparel.

The writing and inspiration on mere mortall, urban earth mama and crunchy [on the inside].

My yoga classes with Mary Bruce. Her main teachers are John Friende and Rod Stryker, but Mary is master all in her own right. She is a goddess and a gentle, intelligent being with a voice as soothing as chamomile. I can sincerely say that she is one of the best teachers I have come across. This path of my practice has brought me to deep places yet I am remembering to remain gentle, accepting my body while not setting limitations. So different from my past practice where I forced Asana many times without intention and respect for the journey. I owe this to a mix of age and motherhood, the desert heat penetrating my bones, and Mary Bruce. I am growing deeper in my roots and lengthening up, steady like a tree.

My subscription to The Sun magazine. It’s full of social essays, short fiction, photography and poetry. But the best part is the section where readers write in each month on a particular subject. High Quality Publication.

And finally,

The Mayan Calendar. I am not one who thinks the “world will end” in 2012 when the Mayan calendar abruptly stops. I am always leery of ancient documents lost in translations. I do think it speaks of shift, a transformation, a reversal in the way the world flows. I do believe that living in accordance with a natural rhythm, at any level, will aid in balance and harmony and great changes could occur. It’s apparent that the cosmos and the earth where pillars in the construction of the calendar and those are things I long and try to pay attention to. The calendar ends, and a new age begins, on my 38th birthday.

My dog Naan found me back in 1998. I was renting a little Sears Craftsmen in middle of Hollywood, behind Sunset Blvd and just East of Highland Ave. It was truly the best house I have ever lived in. Restored hardwoods throughout, crafty built-ins, dark cherry fire-place and mantle, it was pink and white exterior and we painted the inside shades of merlot and forest. It had enormous Birds of Paradise growing along the front drive. They stood in thick lines guarding like alien militia. It also had a crack-head living in a small one-room apartment in the garage located behind my place. I’m not just using the term loosely, Antonio smoked a quite a bit of rock. Besides having a good intuition I was living in a city where employers encouraged the use of any performance enhancing drug. I knew that stir in the eyes and the grit of the jaw of a crack and speed user. Within in the first week he moved into the small $300 a month room, Bill had to break in to extinguish a fire that was spreading throughout his carpet. Apparently he had his burners on the floor, plugged in and then ran out to the store and left them to smolder. Bill said the inside of the place was without a doubt a drug-den. Antonio used to come out wearing nothing but a wife-beater. No underwear. Nothing but his sac hanging in the breeze and high speed rant about something or other, and to perfectly honest he made such little impression on me that I can’t remember much of what he ever said. He slurred and was full of himself which got boring after the initial contact high gave wore off. I called my landlord a few times to complain. I am pretty tolerant, you have to be when you live in the middle of Hollywood, esp. in the late 90’s before serious gentrification took place. But when the homeless dude who always staked out the 7-11 parking lot up the street came and pounded on my doors and windows in the middle of the night looking for Antonio(the neighbor), I had really had it. My landlord, unfortunately, was a total slum-lord and rumor had it he allowed Antonio to pay him with blow-jobs.

One day Antonio came home with the most beautiful pup. I had seen this exact dog in my dreams. She was sleek, slim, sly. Intense black and white markings spread throughout her shiny coat. She moved with grace and ease like a wolf. Her eyes sparkled like the sea in clear shallow waters flickering and waving; shifting with sunlight. He was walking her down my driveway on a rope. I saw this through my dining room winder. I ran outside.

“Antonio, where did you get her? She’s beautiful.”

“This is my new wolf bitch. I named her Nanock.”

“Dude, she’s not a wolf.” I got down on the ground and felt this magnificent creature, pet her, scratched her, rubbed her belly. Looked into those eyes. A sweet baby no older that a year with the soul of a Mother. We got lost inside each other.

“She’s a pure Husky, Antonio. Where did you get her?” I looked up at him squinting; the sun was bouncing off my face so I couldn’t read his expression well. Was he serious?

“My friend gave her to me. She’s a wolf, not a dog. She’s gonna be my bitch watch-wolf.” He laughed a part diva-part-drug-user-part-hurt little kid laugh. “My bitch watch!”

I translated that for myself. He traded her from some crack. Probably from someone who has stole or found her in the first place. Huskies are runners and they are one of the most common “lost dog” breeds out there.

“Do you know how to take care of her? She’s so beautiful Antonio. Husky’s are work.” I knew this because I had been learning about them for years. They were highly intelligent dogs. Stubborn. Not obedient in the least unless there is food or a run involved. They like to lead. They dig holes. Their coats work at keeping them warm and cool. They love kids. They shed like a wooly sheep.

“Yeah, yeah. I know how to take care of her. C’mon Nanock.” And he kicked her to get her walking.

“Don’t kick her!” I stood up. I was pretty much a couple inches taller than him. And I had a few years as well. Even in the years Hollywood street living had prematurely carved around his mouth and on his forward, I could still see a late teenager shine to his eyes.

I got really close to him. “Don’t fucking kick her.” I breathed in his face. My eyes drilled through his.

Antonio lifted his left hand, limped his wrist and waved me off with a few sarcastic flicks. I didn’t say anything else. I was not interested in starting trouble with him. I was just interested in his new dog.

A couple days past and Bill and I decided to just watched and listen to the scene. We lived close enough to him to observe whether the dog was being treated well or not. During the day we could her crying and whining a puppy whine from somewhere outside the garage. There was a fence and a small space on the other side of the garage where we didn’t have access. There was no way into except from inside his apartment… unless we scaled a wall. At night, when Antonio would have small smokey gatherings in his room, it got silent behind the fence. She must have been inside then, smoking with them all.

Three days later I came home from work and there she was, sitting in my living, laying on the floor, wagging her tail at me. How the hell did she get in my house? My backdoor was opened, but I was sure I shut when I left that morning.

“Come here girl. Come here.” I got on the floor.

She ran over to me wagging, licking, dancing, jumping. She was my girl. I was her mama. There was no doubt in my mind. She found me. She took a huge runny poo all over the floor covering I had been working on painting for weeks. And I wasn’t in the least bit upset.

When Bill came home we both talked about how even though we were sure Antonio was making and smoking crack, we had no real proof he was abusing her. So we brought her back to him. Well, Bill brought her back. I laid in bed and cried. Apparently Antonio had not even known she was missing.

Very early the next morning Bill stood over me, shaking me, waking me.

“Hey baby, get up. Get up. Take her out of the house. I gotta go into work. Just stay gone with her all day and we’ll figure things out when I get home. I open my eyes up and there she was, standing on the foot of our bed, panting.

Bill got up to go to work and heard her whining and crying so loudly he had to scale the wall and see what the deal was. Our little pup was tied to a foot long rope, a bag of dog food totally ripped up to bits was scattered everywhere. She had a total of about 4 feet of square space. Bill picked her up and climbed back over the walk with Nanock in his arms. Not an easy feat. He brought her to me in bed.

“My hero.” I squealed. Nanock and I spent the day running from park to park and visiting friends.

That night we talked about what we had done. Stolen a dog, basically. Not a very nice thing to do. We wanted to keep her, but the reality was we had NO yard, we both worked 40 hours a week, not counting the commute time. She’d be alone more than I would want my best friend to be. Then there was the border-line criminal who we stole her from that lived 20 feet away. The Husky rescue was full. The pounds in L.A. were horrible, cruel dungeons of places, so we’d never bring her there. We had no friends interested. A few days passed and we’d wake up before the sun came up, sneak her out for a long walk, then hide her in our house with the shades down, plenty of water and newspaper for her bathroom emergencies and our other neighbor who we confided in worked at home so she would sneak over and let her out to pee once or twice. We never got a knock on our door from Antonio asking about the dog. Never saw a lost dog sign. As a matter of fact, one time when I was sneaking her out for a walk, I swore he saw me and just turned his head the other way.

We decided he was not capable of being her parents. And we felt we were.

So we stopped hiding the fact we had her after the first week or so. He saw us a few times walking her and never said a thing. We thought this to be really bizarre, but jut played along. About a month after we took her we found another place to live after deciding our perfect little house was not so perfect for Naan (the new name we gave her after the sweet bread we ate the night we decided we were hers.) Our new place, at about 600 sq. feet was less than half the size of our old one but the yard was massive, endless, fenced in and gem of a place for our new dog to run free in.

Naan bought Bill and I closer. We’d only known each other around 6 months at that point. But she gave us a sense of place and commitment. We began deciding things as a trio. We took weekend trips to mountains, from 7,000 foot pastures in Kern County, to bear-font printed river beds in Santa Barbara, we roamed the outdoors . She was this wild slightly cracked out little spirit that lead us to beautiful crevices in the West. We watched her run free as we witnessed a bit more meaning in our slightly sticky, fast, freeway driving, night-clubbing life. Bill and I grew with our sameness in nature, the desire to climb mountains, pitch tents by rivers, and sleep next to crackling fires and skies that spilled stars down the sided of the globe. Naan helped set the tone for our future.

The night before we were going to move into our new place, Bill, Naan and I fell asleep on the couch watching Saturday Night Live. We woke with Antonio trying to break through our window.

“You motherfuckers have my wolf. She’s mine!”

Bill and I jumped. What the? We realized that someone’s head was trying to come through our window screen.

“We’ve had this dog for a month, Antonio. You weren’t taking care of her. Now get the fuck out of our window and go home.”

“No way man. That’s my dog.” He kept trying to climb in our window, busting out the screen.

Bill physically pushed him out.

He ran back to his garage apartment screaming at us, calling me a whole, slut, cunt. We walked through our house and headed out the back door so we can see him pass by to his place. He yells to me about his friend Demi Moore and how she is going to come over and kick my ass. I am now totally convinced he is utterly wacked. I almost had to laugh. Demi Moore?

“You are a fucking whore prostitute! I see you working the corners! Hooker!” He is screaming and pointing at me from him door wearing boxers, an aqua wife-beater and tube socks.

I stand at my back door, looking over my small fence at him. My mouth hanging open trying to say something back but couldn’t muster up a word.

Bill was 24 at the time. He was not the man he was now who would breathe it out, walk away and let it go. Then he was a bit more reckless and like a shot of lightening he flew out the back door and over to Antonio and tried to clock him in the mouth. I screamed. Antonio slammed the door in his face before his fist got to him and instead pounded the door. I heard him wince. As soon as Bill started to walk away, Antonio opened the door again, “You pussy!” he called to Bill.

Bill turned and charged him again. Again he ran inside and slammed the door.

Bill stood there fuming. I could see his fists clenched. His eyes, poisonous darts. His teeth, gritting.

Then out of nowhere a young nineteenish topless man with a chest cut like diamonds jumps out of Antonio’s little window like a ninja and attacks Bill. Slams him in the nose with a fist and throw him on the ground. I scream. The kids just stands there. Antonio is laughing from the door. Bill gets up, shocked. Passive. Walks away. The large and cut guy goes back into Antonio’s apartment through the door.

The police end up doing nothing, as usual. Bill still has a deep scar on the bridge of his nose.

We had most of our stuff packed for the move so we began moving into our new place that night around 2am.

We never saw Antonio again. Naan loved her new yard played and ran all day and dug up every garden I started to plant. Around a year later after living next to a Vietnam vet who would keep his 3 daughters and wife hostage in their house for long weekends, we decided we needed a bit more outdoor space. We packed our bags again and we moved to Idaho. That’s where she found Thunder.

I got off my dead-cat track.

This morning Naan and Thunder brought us a dead black cat at our backdoor. She stood next to it so proud, begging me for praise with her eyes and her pant. Thunder on the other side of the poor kitty with three bloody dots on his snout where the cat gave a good fight.

How do I explain that to my 2 1/2 year old who wants to play with the kitty ’sleeping’ outside our doors?

All the recent and amazing photos of my kids are by the worlds best MWAC (mom with a camera) Jeanette.

If everything in life was right Then we would never have to fight So if we never used the brain Then only carcass would remain If man had never used his hands Then he could never understand The joys of making this and that Like winning money from the slot

Forget about stupidity Discover your ability Develop your creativity Cultivate humility To brave the stormy weather Oh my brothers And heed my foolish words

You see the more you give to life Is the more you’re gonna get from life So go on and give Don’t count the cost And the less you give to life Is the less you’re gonna get from life So save your dough And your soul might be lost

If every man should be the boss There’d be no one to groom the horse Mechanics none to fix the car No humble man to spread the tar If every man should be on top Now tell me what the hell could stop Top heavy from a fatal drop Extinct would be the mortal crop

It’s time we learned to be satisfied Curtail resources running wild Too much have you, get rid of some There are too many who have none Oh my brother, help them to face the stormy weather And heed these foolish words I tell you

Chorus

You got to give if you got To those who have not You got to give if you got To those who have not Not asking you to swap You gotta give to get You gotta give if you got Oh you gotta give if you got To those who have not You got to give to get

a beautiful early reggae tune by Bob Andy. Listening to it has set the mood for the night. Try to find it and give it a try. So sweet.

Being asked to help create and be part of a marriage ceremony is like being asked to witness the birth of child. It is beyond flattery and it bursts the word joy. It is a gift of love. It is an honor.

Tonight one of my muses, guardian angels, healers, SISTER, and friend asked me to be part of a trio to marry her to her man. Her man who is one of my muses, guardian angels, healers, BROTHER friend. And it just so happens that the two of them met and fell in love at OUR wedding over 3 years ago.

I bawled for a few minutes when she asked me to join our friends who I like to call Aimless and Fairysister to create a soul unification ceremony with them. Then I shook with chills. And then I envisioned her in a dress, simple and soft. His hands holding hers and their smiling lips quivering together. The quiet chanting of friends, gentle beats on a drum, the bubbling of a river, the crackle of a fire, the faint chime of a bell. Because these two are such heavenly creatures, I feel like I am being asked to bind the mother goddess with her horned god.

Place: a spot by the river which resembles The Shire in the pulsing Ojai Valley, CA When: The Day of the Breakthrough Celebration (according to the Mayan Calander). This is the day to help bring forth the Feminine energy to heal the rift and seperation that occured over 5000 years ago. It is a day where the Earth will have the chance to open up to oneness. A shift perhaps. Why: Love. It’s all there is.

I am still in blissful shock. I love them so much but had no idea they loved me that much back. They are remarkable people, tall, beautiful, bold, artists. Plus they live my dream of having 5 goats as pets and share land with a coop full o chickens.

I am inspired by this moment. I want to honor them and serve them and surround and help them to connect with that space that lives deep in their hearts that is divine.

Anyone out there conducted a ceremony? If you did, what did you do? Between the 3 of us I am sure we will create sacred space for them to shine in, but I am interested in anyone elses experiences.

peace.

Photo by the beautiful Jeanette

I have been asked so many times: “why Sula?” This is a good question. I like to answer it. I like it much better then having to respond to this: “Zoola? Zoola? Where did you get that name from?”

Sula is a word for Peace in an untraceable North African dialect. In Iceland, it is the word for The Sun. Supposedly, though I can’t find proof anywhere, in an old Germanic tongue, Sula means, little bear by water. Sula is a novel by the inimitable goddess of bound words, Toni Morrison. Sula is also the name of a lioness at the African Wildlife Park somewhere outside the city of Phoenix. A man named Astarius told me that particular fact at an Anthony B show my husband and I recently went to. It was the first time I had ever left Sula at night and for more than 2 hours. Astarius, dressed in layers of African garb and wearing 20 pounds of wire-wrapped amethyst came up to me and I think started to sort of hit on me. I can not say for sure though. I have a hard time picking up those kinds of vibes these days— my man radar is down, plus I usually I have a couple kids in tow and my social life is the grocery store and library, places filled with other mamas. I usually smell like breast-milk poo and BO so most men stay far, far away. Astarius starts throwing me some astrological type lines and I cut to the chase with him: I have 2 kids and I am hear to do the winey-winey dance with my husband. I do tell him about little Sula and how I left her with my brother and his wife andthat I was really nervous to be away from her. He asks me to come into a quiet corner with him. Because Bill was 10 feet away listening and by the smile on his face, obviously amused by our interaction, I followed Astarius. In our little quiet corner he cuped his large dark hands and puts them over both of mine. Then he told me to visual Sula’s heart in the middle of our hands. And to send her heart love. Then he started making the most amazing sounds with his throat.nose.mouth area. It was basically the exact sound of a Didgeredoo. Vibrating. Electrifying. Elevating. Tingly. I imagined Sula being snuggled and loved in the long arms her unncle or being rocked and sung to by her aunt. I imagined her taking the bottle of pumped breast milk and being comforted by the sound of her big sister playing near-by. He finished his sounding (what he called Reiki-Om) and I felt better. I knew Sula was just fine and in good hands.

She isn’t named Sula because it means peace, or the sun or a bear. Or after a lioness at a wildlife park. Although those things are all pretty nice.

We picked the name Sula out for our unborn daughter back in 2000 when I wasn’t even close to being pregnant. We visited Missoula, Montana a bunch of times that year—Bill had been booked for a handful of shows. Missoula is a hippy-hip little university city in the middle of breathtaking Montana, the place where Purple Mountain Majesty is sung about. Good music would pass through Missoula and anytime a mash-up-the-dance-reggae dj was needed, promoters invited Bill up for some playtime. Bill and I would hop in the pick-up and treck up to Missoula from Sun Valley, ID, the place were we took a year long sabbatical from L.A. (aka, Sanity Leave). Some very generous Trustafarians (this is what we called jobless white kids with very long dread-locks and what seemed like an unlimited supply of cash) booked us in cheap yet cozy hotels, made sure we had food and fine quality herb and in return Bill spun music with some pretty fantastic musicians. It was, to say the least, a very fun time in our lives. We loved playing reggae in the mountains of the old west. We loved Missoula.

We loved it so much that one particularly late evening when the chalice had been passed around quite a few times we decided that if we had a girl we would call her Soula, short for Missoula.

Fast-forward 2 years. Bill begins a serious Aikido practice. In Aikido cosmology SU is a seed syllable. At the heart of a mandala that Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, often used to explain what Aikido was, is a circle, and in its center a dot superimposed by the symbol SU, the seed-sound of the universe. SU is the kototama of creation– the pure vibration out of which all things emanate. From this incomprehensibly dense point or sound, steam, smoke, and mist pour forth in a nebulous sphere , giving birth to our phenomenal world. SU is the original sound, the beginning, the word. Just like the Aum (om) in Sanskrit. Bill was now sure he would have a daughter named Sula (changed from the original Soula version. Though I kind of liked the added o…a little soul in the su).

Fast-forward another year. When a small pink girl who resembled a 5-petaled rose came out from me in our apartment in L.A. she was most definitely not a Sula. She was a Mia. Mia Rose.

When I got pregnant again we were thinking she was actually a he and therefore he would be a Sebastian.

But Sula came down and out and then up, up out of the water and into our arms. She was a Sula. She was utterly and unmistakably a Sula Pearl.

And when times get tough, like crying fits late at night, or unexplainably in the late afternoons screams, we often sing the sound of SU SU SU to her and she very quickly stops the tears, get still and looks at us as if she remembers that this is exactly how it is all suppose to be.

It’s raining.
It’s pouring.
It’s pounding. It’s sounding. Around this desert.

The power of a few little white kids doing a rain dance. Pure mind, pure words, pure heart, pure actions; you might just get what you need.

I will say this here on public domain: Thank you rain.