misplaced mama

My husband is the hot one on the left. Yum.

I have been laying low. The pox, which turned out to be Mock Pox*, threw my “schedule” a bit. The virus that I did have knocked me on my ass. It forced me to sit right on it and do nothing but concentrate on some creative outlets; visual, audio, tactile. Like a meditation, moving and wild, I played with paint, video, music, paper, and flying balls on strings. I read trashy magazines and fine literature. I nested a bit and felt that cozy yet raw side of carving a cave within the house. I say raw because for me the more time I spend at home in creative movement, the more I was forced to look at myself, dead-on. I had to examine and feel my heart, my thoughts, observing that person I think is me. It’s a good thing, an honest thing, necessary for my expansion. But I think one life’s greatest challenges is to look at themselves, all sides of themselves as well as humanity, to pay attention to the subtle and intricate system of energy we live. I sat and went to a dark place to explore some stuff. I left my hope at the door and stood in the mire and sickness and ignorance that remains in our human circle. I forced myself to stared down at the possibility that I may not be able to love and serve enough to heal even a little bit of my own and my communities pain. I felt the wrongs of this world, this war, this blood shed. I felt the rape of this earth, of these people. I felt the mental slavery that we all hold on to in some way or another. I visited the place inside that just screams, FUCK. Being the eternal optimist, the hopeful soul that I am, I really do not like to dive nose first into the shadow side of life. But I did it, knowingly and thoughtfully, although I still have not figured it all out or why I even let my head go there for a few days. Interestingly enough, in the middle of my mental journey, I was given a book and in it I read that myspecific birth date and year offer me the chance to live with prophetic insight and that if I wanted I could help serve with that insight. It said I could choose that path or decline it. But if indeed that was the road I wanted to take, I’d have to jump down into the dark pit, fight of the serpents, and get burned a bit by some fire. Yet I needed to stay detached and keep my soul of light for an easy ascension out.

Which takes me to one of the reasons I haven’t written in a while. While walking in the murkiness, it seems I would have no choice but to express the form of these shadows with words. How could I write and not write about how utterly pissed off and faithless I am about the state of this world. I can write about things hindsight, and in a very detached way, but I can’t share my emotionally charge, my pity, my fears, my sadness, my depression. I can’t write about that stuff publicly. I always write candidly. I am honest when I write. But I do so on the upbeat, never the downbeat. My writing here does not justify who I am, it does not reveal my personal human experience. Sometimes I feel weird about that. As a writer, do I have an obligation to tell it all, the nitty-gritty dirty details, the ones I usually tend to avoid even in my own flesh life? But I have to remind myself that this is a blog, and for me that’s not a journal. Maybe I just cherish my own mystery too much. I definitely am petrified of scrutiny and judgment. Petrified of it. (The most recent comment on my post A Mystery is only a fraction of the type of thing I do NOT want to attract). I don’t want to be judged as a mother, a lover, a friend or a person. Therefore, I tend to write about ‘things’ or ‘things and me’ but never really about myself.

Somehow I think that dark side of the creative force, the destroyer, is just as much teacher and messenger as the Creator. And as a writer, if going into darkness brings me to meaning, then is it my obligation to share it? When I go to that darkness I not only feel the essence of my own mortality, traveling to each internal closet stuffed with lifetimes of pain, I also travel to a collective realm where our world holds negativity, fear and destruction. I swear I can feel the pain of those close to me, taste it like metal in my mouth. I can also feel junk and sadness and death of those I don’t even know, like the Earth’s own aches become isolated in my creaky bones. Most of the time I protect myself, I pull a cloak of light around me, use it like a shield from the unknown darkness that is inevitable balance. I like to keep my life in the lightness, it’s safe and pretty and makes for good conversation. But I know my path as of late is not that simple. And if I want to move forward in this evolution, in this journey to my dreams, then I must go to the dark-side, feel it like my own, as it is, and come out re-birthed. And I might need to start sharing that, too. Then again, who really wants to hear about my shit?

I am truly in search mode. Feeling ready to leave Phoenix, wanting to rise from my own ashes, but I know there is a bit more time before we are completely burned up and brought to ash. More lessons, some planning, putting our thoughts in concrete action. It all takes time but I have never felt closer. We have been here one more year than I said I would stay, and one less year then Bill promised would be the longest. It’s exciting to think about the next piece of Mama Earth we’ll call home. I suspect this one will be where we’ll root for a long time. I have never said that about anywhere before. But I am ready to root, to build a base for my family. I can only imagine what a special place it will be for us. I know you can’t have everything all at once, but I can have it all in different moments. I know I can’t get piercing high desert sun with lush green wet soggy rainy ocean mist. I know I can’t smell sea air or make campfires on the beach in the sunny desert. It’s part toss-up and part dream. Once it’s much clearer to me, I look forward to writing about it. I can’t wait to journey to a few places, check them out, take photos and share what I see and feel. I am very over feeling misplaced. Though I often think my misplacement it more planetary than earthly. Sometimes I really do think I am from Jupiter. Regardless, I know there is an earth community for me, a place of this land that will cradle us so well. Call us by our names as we take real good care of Her.

My daughters are so amazing. Mia fell yesterday and when she hit the floor, she almost bit threw the side of her mouth. She was climbing up on her wooden mod-style high chair (svan’s are not good for climbing) trying to find the cabinet that I hid the mini-tootsie pops in. I ran over to her right before she let out a scream, and when she opened her mouth to cry, her blood squirted all over my face. it then poured down her cousin’s hand-me-down-gold sequined dance costume. I have never seen blood jump out of a mouth like that. I somehow remained calm in the bloody moment, a trait I usually do not possess. One chomp harder and she would have bit threw the side of her mouth. Poor love. She is so brave, really. Calm. She is not like me. I stub my toe and you’d think my arm got chopped off. She keeps telling me she is “healing real well” and that it will “feel better so soon because she is sending love to her boo-boo.” The left part of her inner- mouth/cheek and her lip are ridiculously swollen. We have been rinsing her mouth out with salty water, which she loves (if only she could have butter melted in there, she’d be in heaven) and having her chew on ice for swelling and giving her kiddie Advil for the pain. Lately I am seeing all remnants of baby fade away and this little girl is surfacing, emerging, shining. And I really like her. I admire the person she is becoming…for the most part, she’s compassionate, has a great sense of humor, she is without a doubt brave and strong and tough. She is a leader, yet is willing to follow in appropriate situations. She loves moving her body, stretching, singing. She is wildly creative. She is beginning to talk about what is “pretend” and what is “not”. She still holds her array of imaginary friends close to her heart and it makes me swoon when I hear her playing with them. She is helping me interpret my new deck of ‘tarot-like’ cards, immediately reading the fabulous paintings on each card with her own third eye and telling me what she sees. I am beginning to see more of me in her as the days go on…not sure if that is because I must act like a 3-year-old, or because her and I spend too much time together, or because she is my daughter. And when I think I can’t take it anymore, like when she is dragging Sula around by her arm, or totally ignoring everything I ask, or throwing food at the dog…she goes and says something like, “Thank you mama, thank you for being here, you make it all happy.” And she glows like a wildflower, the wildest and brightest one dancing in the field.

Sula now sings along to “Everybody Passes Gas” from the girl’s My Bodyworks CD; I Love Rock and Roll and Cherry Bomb by Joan Jett; and the theme to some Little Einstein DVD….”Do-ing drip rockey chip”(going on a trip in a rocket ship). She’s holding her own with her super-hero sister. I’ll never really have to worry about my little Leo, lioness, fire-child from the inner sea. She has a spark. She is a flirt. She is pretty clumsy. Okay, very clumsy, which is so cute. My dancer friend told me she’ll be a dancer someday…it’s the clumsy types that can really move. As always, this one pulls me in like most people can’t. I can sit and smell her and rub her and love her for hours. And she lets me. I don’t know if it’s the age, (happy 1.5 sula!) or the girl, but she can totally hang. It’s lovely. And she is drop dead gorgeous. Just gorgie, really. I still can’t believe I had part in making her. Her vocabulary is vast and can pretty much repeat and grasp anything being said. I don’t find this quality in way an indicator of intelligence, but still, Bill and I look at each other in amazement when she says things like, “Ssshh, monkey is sweeping bed” (after she puts her monkey to bed. She adores all monkeys and sorta looks like one, too.) Or she’ll come up to me and say, “Shula park. Shula swing. Shula out.” This is when she wants to go have some fun outside. My favorite is when she stands at the ‘fridge and says, “eat. eat pidda. cheese. me cheese.” Cheese. A girl after my own heart. Although I do believe she is still very sensitive to cow dairy and are trying to cut back on that yummy stuff. And the way she walks…oh, if only I could describe that strut, that sway, that shuffle. I could watch her for days without getting bored once.

I have been heavily involved in continuing the creation of our music production and performance business (started it over 10 years ago) preparing press packages for indie record labels, indie film production companies and live venues all over the world. I am absolutely loving myspace. I know, I know. Get a life! It’s totally commercial and crazy, but being a former PR representative in the entertainment industry, I can say I find it to be one of the most genius beginning marketing tools out their for grassroots and above. It’s pretty incredible. The Man sucks, but Rupert now owns a rocking way to connect creative and business endeavors around the world in an instant. I’m all for it. Beats the old school way of phone calls and phone books and searching magazines for names. It’s been a blast to really work with my man on a new level. We vibe really well together and our dream has been to merge our careers so we are truly spending time like a family, together, working, cooperatively. I like managing them, it’s a good way for me to sneak out of the mother-outfit just for a few moments hear and there and put my phone voice back on and try and charm people into believing in the sounds. It’s super fun. I’ve been playing around on the keyboards a bit, trying to unlearn 16 years of classical piano training. Not so easy. I also start guitar lessons in the next couple weeks. I have been messing around on the guitar for years and it’s time I just learn the strings a bit. Still trying to write for some songs, but songwriting is proving to be as hard as I always thought it would be. In songwriting it’s not so much about the words but about the lack of words. In the style of music my man and his partner (the other hottie on the right in the above photo of them) it’s more about subtraction and reverb, echo and light. It’s dub music and if you never listened to it, go out and find something by it’s human originator, Osborne Ruddick, a.k.a. King Tubby (blessings to his soul). Back in the early 70’s he stumbled upon his own genius in his music studio and the result was an arsenal sounds that became a genre of music called ‘dub’. A smooth birth into being, it’s the grandchild of reggae, and if you like, it can permeate you rolling waves, smooth hills, deep, deep valleys. When I take in the vibrations of this music, I realizing that what I feel is one in the same of what I am made of. Cypriano, Bill’s musical partner, said it well in an LA Weekly interview once, “Dub music is the only music that parallels the same frequencies as the human body.” For me, he is right. But you have to be into music that only uses a few words, subtracts sounds more than adds them, and forces you to just simply let go of what you think a song should be like. This music is lke a ritual for me. It makes me dance, write and love. It gives me faith. That’s all I need. The music our company makes is very modern in style yet grows from the roots up in the honor of what King Tubby blasted upon over 3 decades ago.
King Tubby

My fabulous sister Erin came to town to help our family out for a week and just be an utter light, joy and inspiration to us. My house was cleaner than ever and it smelled like fairy-berries. There is something about Sister E, her aura, her smile, her laughter and her excitement about life that thrills me, make me feel at home whenever she is around. She had us dress up for Fancy Monday at the Zoo. She adorned the girls with feathers and sparkles and eye-painting and wings and tings. We looked fabulous and fancy. Mia was in her glory. She danced around the zoo and sparkled. She looked at me like, “And why have we never done this before, Mama?” So now it is a tradition.

I cherish her and give so much thanks for her desire to be creative, crazy, crafty. Her and I work really well together, spending many nights on the computer making videos, writing bios, collecting information and addresses and drafting letters for the music endeavor. Her support, her faith and her inability to stand-still (like me, she hears the beat and she must dance) make me feel so good. Plus she has this magical, ethereal, seductive voice. So we put her on the mike, too, got some mystical vocals. She is one of my puzzle pieces.

And so here this is, so utterly random. I may not even post this. But it’s late and my family’s warmth in bed is calling me, beckoning me to come be with them, so I will hit post without even an edit (nothing new). At least it’s something. And something for a writer is better than nothing. Maybe. Maybe not.

*Doc called to tell me that the blood work I had came back 10 days later saying that it was pox negative. This was really freaky to all of us who saw the pox and felt strongly it was pox. I am trying to find other viruses that look and feel the same, but have had no luck.