Rewind Selectah! Don’t stop till the very last drop!

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And yes, she is learning to scratch. Her father cringes every time she puts her finger down on a limited edition vinyl and takes it for a little push and pull. 

One of the two turntables is missing a slipmat (the one she is placing a Dancehall compilations called Punany.  Um, yeah, she says that’s her  ‘very best’ record.  Anyway, I told her she couldn’t use the turntable without the slipmat.  She climbs down from her DJ booth after thinking for a moment.  She heads over to the sacred paper towel cupboard, pulls and rips two towels off the roll.  Climbs back to her booth and figures out how to get the papertowels on to the turntables in place of a slipmat.  "is this good?" she asks.  "yeah it’s good" i smile at her.  "perfect".  The dance party begins.

B and I debated whether or not to put his gear out in the open at this house.  We had a designated studio space in AZ.  My feeling has always been, a child learns by watching (which she has done since she was 2 weeks old). And then a child learns by doing.  "easy for you to say" he says to me.  "it’s all my gear not yours."  "Many a time I have let her write love stories to Cody Maverick (Surf’s Up) on my laptop, " I remind him.  "Yeah, and she’s busted two computers," he reminds me. 

But in the end he decided put it all out, whether it be for Mia to learn the trade, or because his cold ass is sick of making music out in the garage, it seems to be working out. 

Mia’s Old Skool Mixed Tapes available upon request.

Nope.  No babe yet.  But I’d like to take the time to welcome Talia Grace into the world.  Her bas-ass beautiful mama birthed her into the world two days ago.  C and I have have been pregnant together from close to day one.  I take such joy in seeing a photo of her and her newborn girl, surrounded by bright blessings and all things magic.  My turn soon, just not yet….

While waiting to birth some life into being,  I thought I’d take the opportunity to link you to a website I’ve started writing for.  It’s something I’ve been meaning to do, but keep forgetting to tell ya’ll about. While driving in the ghettomobile up the coast and sleeping by the sea, I read the book 2012: The Return of  Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck. It’s the journey of a man seeking shamanism in all forms, from Rudolf Steiner to the sacred tea from the Auyausca leaf, from Mayan timekeepers to crop circles.  While the book questions new age theory, it explores our shifting consciousness as a collective, weaving the individual and the universal consciousness into one story.  I loved Pinchbeck’s mixture of voices, from questioning critical thinker to soul-driven, third-eye opened seeker.  He never once tried to give answers, yet as he seeks shamanic guidance on his own exploratory journey, he became a bit of muse to me, while I conjured up a whole new level of my own personal questions.  Not once did I feel l was being sold a dogma, I was just invited on one person’s wild ride. The core of the book is about opening up to the idea of a shifting consciousness on fast speed, leaving power-centered and material rooted world behind and melting into spiritual awareness and inevitable evolution. I read some more Pinchbeck (articles and such) and the more I read, the more I became intrigued.  Then I found out he created an on-line magazine, Reality Sandwich.  And then somehow I weaseled some words into his domain (stalked them).  It’s truly filled with interesting contributors including DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid (he’s one of my heroes, post-modern theorist, DJ and dub provider? If I wasn’t in love, I’d be in love.) Reality Sandwich’s theme is Evolving Consciousness, Bite by Bite. 

I think my first and short news piece is up, but i’m not sure though.  It’s called "Grow High" and it’s about the need for vertical sustainable farming in large urban centers (food farming. don’t let the title fool ya.)

Regardless, the site is good if you are into weaving stuff like consciousness shifting culture, shamanism, psyche and art.  Check it out. 

*** 

Now back to sitting on my cozy nest,  keeping this little egg warm.  Some cramping.  Some serious spaced out moments where my husband may actually think I suffer from dementia.  As my spiritual midwife would have observed if she walked into my living room: Your baby has landed.  Oh, baby, I feel you.  And you feel so good, I fly a bit high from moment to moment.

Yes, baby has landed.  Now we just wait for sacred doorways to open, when baby says, Okay, enough of this super funky, juicy, internal plane of bliss and spirit, light matter and perfect flow, I now choose The Flesh. I’m supported and loved, and this world calls me to it’s other side.  I’m coming home, Mama.  Open up…and breath. 

God damn her.

My hands throw her book onto the bathroom floor, over the high wall of my tub.  It lands, losing my place; pages filled with Italian Garamond font splay themselves out on the cold tiles.  I turn my head away in denial (and shame) that I just threw a book.  I stretch my leg out and reach my toes for the facet, which I use to turn off the hot stream, a combination of my big toe and the one that comes next, works perfectly.  I look down at my wide pregnant thighs. My round belly lays heavy on top of them.  My breasts lay heavy on my belly, the underside crease, sweaty and wet.  I take my hands and wipe away the moisture.  My nipples are not peach and small anymore; they are impassioned with brick-redness and large, preparing to feed another mouth, the third one. I take a deep breath.  I pathetically sigh, a helpless sigh of surrender to loss.

God damn her.

She wrote my book.

Or the book I should have written.  By now.

 *

Not that we have a ton in common and not that the content would even be remotely the same.  For instance, the demise of her marriage seemed to be catalyst for her search for self and belonging.  My marriage on the other hand only has only seasonal failure that, if I have recorded correctly, happens between November 12^th (my husband’s birthday) and ends around the beginning of the Judeo-Christian New Year.  This is the time when my husband loses his mind just a bit and settles in a murky and moody funk, self-doubt invades him and he undergoes contemplation about his entire fucking life This drives me mad, yet at the same time, I sympathize, I get it.  Although during this time we fail at being a truly “good partnership” and we become “let’s not touch or really talk for a while because we just piss each other off”.   But I get through it.  We both do.  He retreats to books of various types: esoteric to epic fiction.  I usually dive into hyper-attentive motherhood, so many arts and crafts projects that never actually get done and at night bottles of wine and copious amounts of pot (this year I am pregnant so minus the booze and drugs. This is unfortunate).  By doing this I blur out our temporary marital failure.  I finally figured out a few years back trying to help or sitting by and watching does nobody any good.  His metamorphosis is complete by January 5^th at the latest.  We join back forces and take on the world, connecting again. This is how it works. Or how we let it not work, until it works again.  So far it always has.

And unlike her I have dreamed of procreating and living in motherhood since I knew it was a choice I had, age four, maybe even younger.  It was never something I felt pressure over, never thought it was role I had to take on. Quite the contrary.  I waited and waited patiently until my life opened up to my first girl, the one I thought of and saw for years before she became a person.  I know that my longing for children and bringing them into this world was not done in vein but in following my heart.

And unlike her God my God isn’t magnificent.  My God is familiar and ordinary.  I never talk to my God in my mother-tongue, in request, asking for help or guidance (perhaps I should).  For some reason this feels wrong to me, like I am giving authority elsewhere.  I don’t believe in authority anywhere, especially when it comes to divinity. My God today has been a piece of toast from a local baker, warm butter, and spread lavishly with raw honey, all melty along side cup filled to the brim with a pacific northwest latte.  Whole milk.

Like her, the power of Sanskrit mantra and use of mala vibrates under the imprint of my skin energetically connecting our souls. Repetition becomes tangible magic for me.  I become intoxicated with gratitude and blessings when I chant in ancient tongue, fingering beads, 108, a mystic number, the same number of the chapters in her book.  And like her, I could very well find great pleasure in pressing my naked body up against Hot Italian Men, preferably two of them at a time, unrelated, of course. And how I am most like her, where her and I are bonded at the thick yet spacious marrow of our bones is in the  pilgrimage;  it carries my nomadic self much needed clarity, risks and discovery, the venture and movement fill me with vibrancy of owning both mine and world love, merging them as the same. I can feel myself in her feet, imprinting the global soil, eyes burning with observation and throat chakra illuminating with storytelling.  Like her, this is my selfish desire.  To move.  Watch. Listen. Write.

 *

My arms grab at the side of the tub and I lift myself up with a big grunt.  The water has gone away now and my body is covered with the small bumps of shiver.  There are only speckles of lavender seed from my face scrub scattered over the porcelain.  No doubt they will end up in the drain; eventually the accumulation will clog them.  B, now that we are in our time of seasonal marital crisis, will react gruff and annoyed that he has to get out the snake to unclog the old plumbing (any other time of course, he snakes drains with a smile, laughing at my ability to clog regardless if it’s because of my shit or herbal facial scrubs).  I step out of the tub wrap myself in the canary yellow towel that I stole from a hotel poolside last autumn.  I am glad I did since it’s the only one that covers my now 160 (or more) pounds of flesh.  I step right on the book, the one I threw and press it deeper into the floor, like I am pressing out a cigarette onto concrete. How could she?  How could she do this so well, so witty, so loveable and kind. Honest.

Almost thirty-four and I have no choice but to contemplate why I haven’t.  My mind should be on why I still haven’t unpacked half our boxes from the move,  but instead I search my entire body on why I haven’t been able to really write anything in this life yet,  something more than bits and pieces, scraps of memory or mirror.  The only reason I can come up with is also the greatest gift I have ever been given.  Motherhood.

Motherhood.  The initiation into a world of love so profound and exhaustion so heavy it covers me like the largest wave and there is no such thing as head above the water for a breather.  There is only finding comfort under all the weight, becoming weightless, learning to breathe with no oxygen and to function with the sleep still crusted in my eyes and my mind still scanning my dreams from the night before.

And at the same time it is the same thing that gives me powerful permission.  Permission to uncover my confidence, taller than anything I have seen stand on this earth and stronger than I ever was before I become a mom.  Motherhood has given me permission to always walk with my confidence wherever I go, not just to take it out here and there, in places of comfort, but to become my massive esteem at all times, everywhere.  I made life, birthed it and now keep it alive with love.  So do I give a shit what anybody really thinks me?  Am I intimidated by any situation?  Does it bother me that my clothes don’t match or there is food smudged on my face or that I may not be as pretty, or skinny or witty or smart or rich as the next person? Not in the least, not since I have become a mother.  Motherhood gives me the permission to truly know myself, which sometimes is hard to see as the self gets so lost in the process of mothering, but I am almost  forced to be myself; how could I be any other with my bloodline watching every move I make? They examine me and copy me and at times think they are just mere extensions of me, not seeing they are totally their own yet.   I want my children to know me and know that I reveal authenticity and seek my own truth at all times and possess who I am in every situation, never giving that power away.  Being witness to this; hopefully they will choose to try the same. 

And yet, simultaneously, motherhood has stolen the other thing I need to truly be myself: Time.  I have no time to exercise my nomadic legs that ache for movement, alone, without my family.  It has ripped up any passport or writing assignment or publishing contract to roam the earth while it rotates and I get devour the decadence of long-distance experience. It has erased hours each day to sit and think, to walk and breath alone, following the pattern of my steps, and then to light my candle in my red room of creativity and write.  Write.  Write until something good and true and right comes out of me.  This is at the center of my life’s comfort level, this lifestyle I speak of, and so my center remains uncomfortable, in a state of unease and waiting, a clock ticking.  It makes me jealous of those who get to live the writing life fully and with abandon to all else. I will admit that envy.  Because it’s about me, not them, at least I know that to be true.  It is about me.  And I am uncomfortable with the way things are.  Or aren’t.

My writing is squeezed into cramped and dusty corners of my days or nights, with little to no breathing space. For instance, these 2 pages of words have taken two evenings to write.  Not because I sit and ponder on how to arrange them.  There is no revision or edits, there is no spell check. Quite the contrary.  I am throwing them up, heaving them like they are the last words I will ever have time to share.  Tonight alone I have been interrupted at least 10 times and it is 11pm.  Granted, I began writing after the first attempt to bed them at 7:30pm, which is early for me to switch on this screen.  Usually my writing time is a post midnight after thought, like the backwash from the day. And tonight, I needed to write before one eye closed and half my mouth began to drool in a sleep induced state. When it happens like that, my writing is never valid or solid, and to put bluntly, it sucks.  At least it’s not what I crave it to be or what a reader might feel deeply.  Sometimes I succumb to being a mother who sits behind a computer during the day when I am awake (not the kind of mother I want to be) and I try to get it all out there while I have a smidgen of energy, while the kids are running and yelping around me.  Jumping on me.  Tickling me.  Begging me for things like help with pulling on socks or cutting apples or to read books or to smother them with kisses deserved attention.  And this is my life, how I want it to be, filled with them; and I am blessed.  But it does not make for a good writer. 

At when I get angry and I feel sorry for my lack of time or my situation I like to think of Raymond Carver.  I read once somewhere that he wrote his first book of short stories, locked in his car, while his abusive and drunken first wife threw empty whiskey bottles at him out the window of their trailer.  He wrote under those circumstances, not pleasant or easy.  And what about that other one?  Julia Cameron or Natalie Goldberg?  Single mom, unemployed and figured out how to write her first book, broke, while her small baby cried on her lap?  She did it. 

Perhaps my life is too easy.  I have no tragedy to pull through to the other side, no real pressing to say:  FUCK, I MUST DO THIS RIGHT NOW, or I CAN’T LIVE.  Right now all I need is to get through each day with gentleness and consciousness, keeping my kids at peace with this world, connecting them to it through ritual experience and trying to live in love with food in the refrigerator and a house full of whimsy and play.  There is no tragedy here.  Nothing has failed or is desperate, no painful falling to pieces and no serious need to lie on a bathroom floor and cry out to God for mercy and guidance, begging to please tell me what to do.  Like what she had to.  The one that wrote my book.

I don’t bother to comb my wet hair or brush my teeth. My body feels soft after the hot bath and I smother is in shea butter, wishing away any spread of stretch mark with oily massage.  I pick up the book under my foot and go out to the couch and read.  And read more.

*

Courtney is my dear soul mate, my friend from before kids and husbands.  She is a mother, writer, photographer, lawyer. She is from when we chopped off our own hair and died it different colors and took hits of ecstasy and wandered and traveled by ourselves to foreign land and danced endless evenings on crooked wooden floors in West Hollywood bungalows that barely stood erect on that tiny street behind the 4900 building on Sunset. She was from the time I would write and bind my own books and read what was inside them all over the city wearing thrift store skirts and doc marten boots.  Back in the days when I sat in small writing classes on living room floors and drank wine while Cathy Bates laughed at my piece about my feet, how they were beginning to look like my mothers.  Courtney knew me then, and knows me better now. 

So she must have known that the past 100 times the kids and I have went to the bookstore or the library in search of something to read, looking for the exact words, perfect in story and rhythm, beat and meter, so I could shot them up into my blood and change my life forever (because books do that to me) that I have left with none except another Dr. Seuss or Where The Wild Things Are or a new Harold and his purple crayon adventures.  By the time we are done lying around the floor of the kid’s section reading and playing, picking out my girls bound gifts, we are out of time.  Someone needs to sleep.  Or eat.  Or poop.  Or have a meltdown.  So we leave. 

So the other day I came home from the market, balancing a coffee in one hand and a bag in the other.  And on my step is a package.  And in that package was a gift from Courtney.  A book.  To be exact Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love was in the package.  And a note from Courtney:  I think you’ll appreciate this book.  Thinking of you warmly.  Much love.

She has no idea how much love I received from her.  Her intuition and gesture went deeper than just a mailed gift.   She sent me a muse.  This book made me angry at myself for seeing my limitation.  It angered me because I don’t explored my voice more, that I don’t always write with authenticity or raw truth, I skim details and hide from my dark side.  It made me angry that I don’t allow pain or failure enter my literary domain when it needs to.  Those things can bring movement and pleasure; to me and others.  This book made me angry for neglecting my talent, for accepting that I have no time and not insisting that time shift for me, change, expand limitlessly.  It has forced me to make the time, to demand it, to own it.  It is mine and I deserve it. 

This book represents the echo of my inner voice.  And though these words are hers and the experience will never be mine nor do I want it to be, I close my eyes upon myself and find inspiration and guidance.  It’s about a certain flow.  I am not there yet.  But now that time will be on my side, experience will be born (or my eyes will open to it) and words will find that flow with my new and improved consistent practice.  I am slowly changing my life story so that is becomes this.  A mother life.  Yet a writing life.  It is what always has meant to be.

I don’t damn Elizabeth Gilbert.  But it was fun to get so pissed off at a stranger.  I don’t long for my marriage to fail (as a matter of fact, I bet after reading this to my husband our seasonal failure will lift a bit early).  I don’t need to consciously invite dark and tight valleys, or regret, soul torture or sickness, in order to find my muse, I am lucky right now that my life is healthy and well.  I don’t ever want to flee motherhood to become something else or be somewhere else. I can fly around for now as an armchair traveler, yet I won’t I cannot live a moment longer without allowing myself the time for words, the real movement will come later, when responsibility loosens as it always does.  Although I will say my pregnancy hormones do take me to Italy, often, in grand fantasy, with Hot Italian men, definitely two at a time, bodies pressing. But I always come back home.

*

Om.

I love mantras. Love them. I so believe in the vibrations of the words, be it in Sanskrit, English or whatever language that speaks to the heart. From what I was taught, Sanskrit was not specifically created to communicate verbally by what the word defines, instead it was formed to imprint the most ancient sound in one another’s consciousness, enabling people to telepathically communicate through vibrations. Sounds pretty cool. But I think the same goes for English chants (or whatever language). The Universe speaks in all tongue and words uttered with intention sends out a message. Depending on what you say, you are communicating with a larger energetic field, the source, the knowledge vault.

Mantra’s are so powerful when we want to draw something in or heal or just to share gratitude with the universe for all we have. We all catch ourselves saying, “I can’t do this!” “I can‘t do this!” “I am so broke.” “My ass is fat.” “I am so tired.” In many ways these complaints are ‘mantras’ being sent out to the universe. We are delivering a message of what we DON’T have. So when we constantly talk of being so tired…we’ll remain tired because that is what we are affirming. But what if instead of saying “I am so tired.” (I am using this as an example because it seems to be the biggest complaint I have and I have it daily and bitch about it quite a bit. I am trying to break this.) How about saying, “I need more energy” (or sleep). Think about it. Saying I am so tired is just going to boomarang right back and we’ll continue to be tired. But saying what we need…like energy (or work, or a house, or a healthy relationship, or a healing)…then perhaps we may just get that.

There are no rules or restrictions of chanting, probably the most important thing is that it’s none-harmful.* And the point is we don’t have to be totally aware or in some sort of meditative and serious state when we chant. It’s all about the vibration and intent. Point being, we can be doing other things….changing a pooped diaper, driving to the store, grocery shopping (Yes, I do sing to my kids in public without having an ounce of a good voice.) doing paper work, gardening, jogging. I personally love to chant them on walks, belting them out loud so my girls can hear, feel and learn them and for the looks on people’s faces who pass by : gee, she didn’t look foreign, the kids are so blond.(For a reminder of my general neighborhood vibe, read my very first entry from last January, hence where the title Misplacedmama is born.)

While I was pregnant with Mia I had an extremely lucid dream where I was climbing up an incredible rocky and steep mountain. It was pouring raining and I was barefoot; it was challenging, back breaking work. I kept slipping and sliding and in my dream I kept telling myself that this dream was a test of my will and that really it was only a mountain and of course I could keep climbing it. Every once in a while I would say out loud, “I am tired and scared!” But I had to tell myself to stop and instructed myself to start chanting, “To the mountain of no fear.” So while I climbed in my dream, I chanted. When I finally reached the top there was the moon, waiting for me, big, round and a milky amber yellow. It was like 2 feet away from me and I reached out my hand and touched it. I woke up and was aware that my mantra for my last moments of pregnancy was to be, “To the mountain of no fear where the moon is 2 feet away.” Silly, simple, but it worked for me, relieving me of inner-fears. I chanted it on my walks and while I worked. That dream was not unlike my labor in symbolism and when I reached that state of open and my baby came out, she certainly was a little moon.

While I was pregnant with Sula, my sister and I were hanging out with Mia at the park. Mia came running up to us, very suddenly, pointing her finger in our faces and very seriously and intensely said, “DON’T FIGHT IT!” and then in the next moment her face and her voice softened up and she said, “Just riiiiiiide it.” Don’t fight it, ride it. That was by far the most perfect mantra for me from that moment on as control issues and due dates where beginning to clash. Quite a few times in earlier labor, while floating in my birth tub, blowing bubbles in the water, I sang out those words. And in that birth I learned to ride the wave exactly the way I needed to, rarely fighting the rushes of the water.

After Sula’s birth we were experiencing some pretty intense financial situations(broke beyond belief). It was nothing new for us and nothing we knew we couldn’t figure out , we just didn’t know how. Yet. Then I came across a mantra which draws in abundance while greeting the deity, goddess Lakshmi, who safe keeps it, maybe even purifies it and hands it out.

“Om Shrim Maha Lakshmiyei Swaha. (Om Shreem Maha Lawk-Shmee-ya-Swa-haw”

For 40ish days, approximately 108ishX a day (it goes by really quickly, I could finish it in an ½ hour walk.) I noticed a shift and a flow and in came more patience, health and wealth; all things I hoped for. Repetition and intention were all I needed to impresses abundance on my inner-most cellular level, enabling my innate ability to draw in my needs. Or maybe it was just the time for it to all happen, and I saw it coming. Careers changed, businesses started and we finally could take a deep breath and pay some bills.

Bill has one he made up that he calls MC FEC= Money Comes Freely, Easily and Continously. This helps him not stress so much at work, for him, time really is money as well as high pressure and physically laborious. Repeating this helps him release his concern about money while working, so he can just focus on doing a thoughtful and precise job because the money he needs will come in regardless.

I am chanting one now for knowledge and understanding. My lessons are like shooting arrows right now and so many opportunities are attacking me, asking me to open my mental doorways. I am utterly overwhelmed by the notions that have been presented to me or I seek; shamanism, quantum mechanics, and the ever-expanding and growing love for and from my children. The later has opened and filled so many places of my heart that it is obvious they are teachers and what they teach me blows my mind away. I know so little and yet feel saturated with all this beautiful information about myself and the world, it keeps finding its way to my brain but I am still trying to figure out how to use it. I want understand me on this Earth a bit better and I found a perfect mantra for it. I pin this up on my calendar and try to sing it here and there while I pass throughout the day:

Om Eim Saraswatiyei Swaha. (Om I’m Sah-rah-swaht-yay Swah-ha_)

This is a greeting to the divine feminine, particularly the goddess Saraswati. She represents the part of us that contains knowledge and creativity, plus helps memory power…memory in this life (I need to find my keys! Wallet! Kid!) and beyond. Like I said, I love chanting in Sankrit, but any language will do once you find the words that resonate with you, words that ring you’re the bell in your gut and open that 3rd eye. I think the most important thing to try is to have somewhat correct pronunciation…and as far as I was taught, you can make up your own little melody for it, or rap it over a beat, however it flies with you.

And even bedtime songs I think of as mantra, ritual of sound. My girls hear the same couple made-up songs about sleeping, and even though they won’t go to sleep, they know it is time to go to sleep. Before even knowing any of the words, Sula knew the tunes and knew they meant bath or night-night, the sound gave her body the message.

So if you feel so inclined, give the universe a message. Make it good, make it peaceful, make up a chant.rhythm.song for it and sing it out for the next month. Believe what you need and want will come to you and don’t give up faith soon. Those seeds will surely sprout if watered (or sung).

Peace.

Om

*What is considered harmful is relative I guess. When I wrote that I was thinking, how do I feel about someone chanting for abundance so they can buy, say, a really huge, massive city Hummer, which to some represents resources waste and emissions, as far a vehicle goes, so some might say that indeed is harmful, remember there are people in places in this world who wear tape over their lips when outside so they won’t accidently eat and kill bugs, any car to them is harmful to living creatures. Others would say absoluetly not harmful. Because there is plentiful abundance in the world, if someonw wants Hummer, another person is then choosing to ride a bike, or better yet, there are an abundance of resources as well, so if oil runs out, then another resource will be made available if we want it to be. Personally, I do try to stay away from judging this kind of stuff and place my hope in a mantra for over-all peace and non-violence.

*artwork by artwork by www. Pop-Temple Hamburg pop.ac

I speak in pictures….

This weekend was has been a blast. Our dear friend Jason came in representing Ojai, CA on Thursday to visit with the family and took some outrageously fun and gorgeous photos. Mostly promo stuff for Great Stone (Bill’s musical venture*). The drove out to rural desert, landed at some abandoned dog track in west Phoenix and did some industrial stuff downtown for over 5 hours. They took over 600 photos, mostly film, lots of monochomatic, but some digital. Can’t wait to see what comes out of his darkroom.

Here is some silliness that got downloaded today.

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When I get the ok from Jason, I will post more. There are vibrant shots with saturated sky and fatigue hues of the desert. They posses a strange sci-fi essence to them; alien and cosmic in nature. They do say that dub music comes from another planet, though.

Really, my beat making man is just a dadda of 2 little girls, and helpful husband…and when he isn’t capturing the ancient soundscapes in endless wire from the roots up to the needles of nothingness, he enjoys vacuuming in his dress-up clothes.

*If you have any interest in reggae, specifically dub music, check out their music myspace I would suggest checking out in a week or so when they upload the newest music from their lab. It’s some really gooey sounds.

(First Mani and now Jeanette with this daily dose of words. How dare they unknowingly challenge me? I had no idea what they were talking about (because for someone who spends a lot of time in front of this screen, I am still what we call a cave girl. I went to this Holidailies site and then before you know it was I signing my life away. But it’s good. It’s so good. As a person who is finally feeling safe calling myself a writer, maybe it’s time I started writing. Daily.)

The most interesting thing on my mind right now is a person. Her name is Jamye Waxman and we graduated together from Binghamton University 10 years ago. She was one of my few but amazing girlfriends those four years there. We traveled to Jamaica together, puffed the largest spliff’s known to woman and swam with vibrant fish. She was a radio DJ on an all Grateful Dead show and used to dedicate versions of Saint Steven to me on air while my room mate and I drank Jim Beam and ginger-ales and listened in. She was the first person I knew who bunjee jumped. And even though she was in a sorority whose dress-code encouraged you to include colors like “dusty blue and cafe latte” and 10 different baseball caps, she always danced to the beat of her own drum; she had fabulous musical taste, an eye for unique fashion and her brain dined on fine literature. She had this sexy, raspy voice and long wavy auburn hair and her skin was milky and moon-like. More than anything she was smart, quick and funny. I knew she would be an important voice in the world. Her day is so here.

Jamye is a sexologist, a sex educator, an activist for the people’s rights to to do it and do it anyway and with whomever they want (consenting, of course) . Once again, it’s all about having access to education, informed and most importantly—inspirations! Celebrate and enjoy sex. It’s only how we all got here. And a big reason that makes me want to stay.

She is the president of Feminists For Free Expression, a group of women who work to preserve the right to “see, hear and produce materials of her choice without the intervention of the state for “her own good” (i.e. true sex education in schools, abortion and birth control literature, sex industry literature and film…). It was started in response to the efforts of groups who want books, music and movies banned.
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Besides being a producer for an adult erotic film, she writes for Playgirl, souldish.com and has a sex advice column in numerous publication. She’s like a real life Carrie Bradshaw! Her voice has been splashed across airwaves everywhere talking about what one might do to give good head to abortion laws. She is powerful. She is brave. She is challenging the way we are taught to think of our bodies and minds, she speaks of sex with the same passion I feel for a women’s right to birth the way she and her baby need; raw, passionate, normal, sexy, peaceful and safe. She is in Brooklyn and I am on the Hot Rock, but if we ever hang in the same place again, I feel some good conversations like why sex and eroticism has been been stolen from modern day birthing and why sex is being governed in our modern day life.

She’s currently writing a book about Masturbation and needs research. It’s a book with words straight from the mouths of women. If you want, you can take her survey (and do it under one of those pretend names) give her a peak into what you think about it and help her write a totally comprehensive book on Masturbation. We all do it. Don’t fool yourself. And if you don’t. You should try.

Her blog. (you can find the link and take her Masturbation Survey here! Fun! For GIRLS only.) Her website

I’ll leave with that. I write about Jamye because I must promote and highlight and shout out The Word of the amazing women that the spinning orb has pulled in (and out) my life for magnificent reasons. These women’s voices are being heard. Rad.

One love.

check this out.

I remember being starving, jobless and trying to make it as a music journalist in LA somewhere around the year 2000. I was writing for bits and pieces, a small check here and there, free music and and sometimes even free food. I heard Tim Love Lee was coming into town for a few shows. I headed myself down to The Standard hotel in West Hollywood and scheduled a dinner/interview with him, promising a publication in a grand outlet. Tim and I and someone else, his publicist perhaps, don’t remember now, ate at Lucy’s El Adobe way down on East Melrose. I turned my hand-recorder on, shoved my face with cheese enchiladas and Corona and Flan for desert and got to hear this man talk about the electro-vibrations of sound that he has given and received in this life. A wonder. A jewel. Slight porn-star qualities. Sexy teeth. A generous and elaborate music-maker. A fine dining companion.

Apparently I did not actually turn on my hand-recorder, just thought I did and nothing made it to tape and I got so drunk I didn’t remember enough to even write a decent short piece. All I do remember is him saying: my music may be good to have sex to, but it’s so much more than that”.

I took the CD out after years of it in it’s case. I played it after girls went to sleep. The rest is personal.

This isn’t Mia’s Top 10. This is mine and there are only 8. Right now Mia has only a Top 3: The Curious George Soundtrack, AC/DC’s High Voltage, and her friend Adri’s Birthday Mix CD with her finger on track 5 over and over again (Rocking’ Robin). She plays those songs on her little CD player all day long, dancing around on her tippy-toes. So her 3 don’t make the cut in my Top 8. Besides, my list is a dedication to Goddess (the singular indicating that together we are One Big Phat Eclectic Goddess).

These tunes come from those with a womb, and blessed be that womb regardless if they have carried human life, they carry a seed of healing sound. Girls who rock, rock.

1. Sade, Lover’s Rock Sade is as smooth and delicious as cappuccino crème brulee. She is right, honest and true. There is a coastline of perfect iridescence that I want to visit and it’s Sade that brings me there. She gives me love like the goddess Eurzulie does; sensitive, sensual, and laden in bronze.

1. Dezarie, Gracious Mother Africa I stumbled across D while trying to buy tickets online to the High Sierra Music Festival. Her voice streamed out of some feed from the website and my still hips and proud shoulders started to loosen and move. She has been blessed with radical and divine communication. Her fire desire is to speak to the people about injustices and poverty and equal rights for I and I, all of us, One. Larger than life her presence is queeny for sure. She shares the power of Brigit, a poet and healer not swayed by any others.

2. X, Beyond and Back, The X Anthology. Xene. Hot. Raw. Bold. Roots. Rock. A total duality. Because she is so hardcore, her poetic and Los Angeles rootsy side might get overlooked. I see a deep and hard chick who has rad hair and a real body. And I also hear this punk lunge into real root music. The guitarist is more than fine and da drums ain’t joking. Xene takes twists and turns and metal’s edge meets punk-pop styly. She takes you down a soft and stretchy road and then slams you against a brick wall. And we all need to get slammed once in awhile. She is like Atlantia, Goddess of the unexpected musical slam bam and give thanks to the wo-man.

3. Mia Doi Todd, Manzanita I’ll never forget the night Mia came up to me at Dub Club, a weekly club that our sound system was resident at for a while. She is slight with a bright aura. A pixie crossed with a faerie crossed with a cat. Black eyes that I swore I saw an angel swimming in. She handed me a flyer. It was a vibrant shot of a field of wildflowers with a skyline growing in the distance. It was taken somewhere smack downtown Los Angeles. It had her name across it. “I just put out my first record.” She proceeded to tell me about a show she was doing in that spot the following week. Not long after that night if you hadn’t heard of Mia Doi Todd then what the heck were you listening to? A KCRW sweetie pie and the girlfriend of Saul Williams. She is both haunting and sugary sweet. Like Aphrodite, with her guitar in arms, she is crystalline adoration and affection.

5.Erykah Badu, Baduizm Once when we landed at LAX, I think we may have been coming from NY or something, I saw Ms. Badu. We were standing at baggage claim and I felt this slivery moon-like presence around me. A grand matriarch presence that made me feel real safe. I couldn’t figure it out but I knew a soul sister, a sage, a spirit from the center of a musical hum was near. Sure enough, my eyes searched around the space and quietly, in a corner, against a wall, stood Empress Badu. She had an acoustic guitar, caseless, in her hand. Her head was shaved bald and her arms displayed magical artwork. I watched as a fan approached her and she dealt with him in such a kind and sensitive way. Like her music. Soft, sweet, polite, and sexy. And though she is a radical, a warrior birthing goddess, she is also Eurzulie, sensitive. So sensitive. Her music reveals that vulnerable side. Her message massages with gentle beats and riffs.

1. Naomi and the Curteous Rudeboys The partner of an old friend of mine, Naomi mixes Edie Brickell and India.Irie and her own amazing coastal meets mountain quality of sounds from the roots up. She is high and flying and pixie-like with the grounding of drummy and bassie. She is Ella, The Forest Queen of All Faes. She makes me happy. Silly. Smart. She makes me think. She is everything but Bling and I love it. Good music to play hard to. Wear combat boots to. Wrap up your hair to and just get dirty in the garden with.

2. Joan Jett And The Blackhearts Need I say more than this? I love Rock n Roll. This goddess is the essense of earth and air and aura. She is golden as gold and dark as black and I love her. I wanna be her. She makes me want to jump all day long. Leather. I want leather. I want to wear leather and save the world with Joan Jett singing in my background. Durga. Joan is Durga. Her voice destroys all evil at the door my mind’s door.

8.Sister Nancy Okay, this is a single that has been in my life for a long time. I pull out this vinyl and put the needle on the groove of the song Bam Bam by the Queen Sister Nancy whenever I need divine inspiration. I suggest that everyone who loves to dance and loves powerful, big hearted, mama goddess booty-lishious-shakin-skankin, go to wherever it is you high-tech types go and download this tune. I named a business of mine after a line in her song (From Creation). I gotta share the powerful message of this song…here are some of the lyrics LOOSELY from Patios:

I say one thing Nancy can’t understand One thing Nancy can’t understand What makes them a talk bout mi ambition Say what make them a talk bout mi ambition Some of the they ask me where me get it from Some of them they ask me where me get it from I tell them no no It’s from Creation I tell them no no It’s from Creation. bam bam, ey, what a bam bam, bam bam dilla, bam bam bam bam dilla, bam bam

What faith. What faith. She get’s her ambition from Creation, it’s not just about her, but about all that surrounds her: It is the beauty and inspiration of all creation that keeps her singing. Nancy is her own Goddess. Her own Goddess.

We all are.

Om.

Tonight was like most nights. I was getting my second wind while making dinner, one of the few things I don’t botch: vegetable quiche with whole wheat crust. Bill played with the girls while I kneaded the dough and chopped the veggies and while the egg pies baked, I got to steal a shower. When it was time to sit and eat, just like every other night Mia played musical chairs and forks and cups and when she finally settled on a spot with all utensils all to her liking, the four of us held hands and got ready to bless the food. Sula immediately started “ooommming” and Mia began to say the blessing:

Blessings on the blossoms Blessings on the fruit Blessings on the leaves and stems….

And then she stopped before saying the last 2 lines. Mama? Dada? Let’s say the one I learn in school!

School? A prayer?

Mia goes to a 2x a week. 2 days a month each parent stays in class. I have not had a chance to co-op yet because two of the mama’s of kids in the class are very pregnant and asked to fill up on their days so after the baby comes they can take a couple months off. My first day will be next week. I usually stay for 15 minutes when I drop her off and come 15 minutes early to watch inside her classroom from the window. So she is there 2 hours with out me. The short time she is there, the walking distance from my house to this school, the cooperative aspect , the price and the fact that I waited to long to get her in anywhere else pushed me to make a decision that The United Methodist Pre-School Cooperative would be just fine. Yup. United Methodist. But here is the thing. I swear somebody somewhere while talking to someone, like the administrator of the school, had told me it is not affiliated with the church. Hearing that and being the person I am which is naïve I figured it was a safe call. I mean, if they say the church and the school aren’t affiliated than how much dogma can bleed over? In hindsight, I think I was feeling desperate and I chose not to go there. Okay, love. What is the blessing you learned?

Bill and I shot each other looks and Mia proceeded.

God is Grace (she meant Great), God is One (I know she meant to say Good but interesting that she chose to hear One). Let us thank Him for our food. Amen. We don’t say Aauuuuuuuumen like at home. Just amen. Like that. Amen. Can you say it like that, too, mama? Amen? Okay. I look at Bill. He looks at me like ‘just forget it until later”.

Amen, we all say

I tell her that’s a very nice blessing and thanked her for sharing it with us. But inside I was struggling. Someone else taught my child a prayer? Someone else made her say that God was a He and that we needed to thank Him for our food? That is a specific belief system. And well, let’s face it, I don’t have a belief “system”.

I have no problem with God. People tried to get me to connect with the Big Guy upstairs my whole life. Except not until I was introduced to a concept broader than a white man in the sky, I never got it. I did finally connected to My god. Which isn’t actually God at all. At least not one I pray to, or one I believe to be outside myself. And myself certainly isn’t a he.

If I feel the need to speak of what seems to be unspeakable, I guess I call it The Source, or The Divine, or The Universe, or sometimes I say Spirit. Or Love.

But the only way I can describe what I truly believe, in what I feel comfortable teaching my daughter isn’t a History or a Scripture, stories about Messiahs or Sins or Being Saved or asking for Atonement. I won’t define her life as a fast car ride to get to a Heaven or Hell. And surely there will be no talk of a Satan. All of the above confused me to no end as a child. All of the above scared me. All of the above taught me to feel guilt, to be judgmental, and to feel segregated to humanity as a whole. Al of the above I can’t speak of because I know none of it to be truth. I also don’t know it to be untrue. So the only way I can describe it is that it’s a mystery.

I come from an Old School kind of Catholic family: first we were Catholic then we were Italian. There was no Bible reading or Born Again business. There were no real political affiliations, but since my family were immigrants pre-depression, we were Democrats. My family believed red wine and balsamic vinegar cured all illness and a drawer in every dresser held plastic containers of Holy Water for minor cuts, skin flare-ups, sore throats and even a few cases of mental illness. A few window ledges held saint statues and desktop bulletin boards were scattered with prayer cards of the Blessed Mother for when we needed her son, St. Jude, for when we were depressed and St. Anthony when my mom couldn’t find her car keys. The Mother was the utmost important figure in my families take of Catholicism. I said the rosary with my grandpa every Saturday night for years (guess that explains my futures infatuations with chanting with mala beads). We mother wasn’t so hardcore, being a women with a scientific mind, she never made me believe the host was the actual body of Christ and the wine was indeed alcohol, not blood. My mother never took me to confession, but my aunt made it her job to take me the first Saturday of every month, where I “confessed” the same 3 things each time for years: not listening to my parents, fighting with my brothers and sisters, and maybe sometimes telling a lie. I was a totally generic confessor.

When I was about 12 years old I gave my Catholic family a bit of a scare. I went to a summer camp up at the lake near my house. Mission Meadows with affiliated with a Covenant Church. I begged my mom because I knew a few cute boys and nice girls from school that were going. She finally complied. I knew she wondered about the church, Catholics don’t tend to farm out their youth on other denominations, like every other religion, their system of beliefs is “correct”. But I think she had faith in me and her mothering to that point(I wasn’t yet a teenager). I remember her saying to my aunt that there were worse things she could beg for than church camp. Come to find out it was Evangelical Covenant. Charismatic. What I think thought was watered down religion ended up being a salvation roller-derby. I came home from camp that year a Born Again. I accepted Jesus into my heart on a warm upstate NY summer night. My cabin-mate yelled out in praise as she saw Jesus walking on the watery ripples of the lake we were in front of.

Praise Jesus! Do you see him? Can you all see him? Praise Jesus!

Yes! I can see him, too! Amen! I somehow didn’t think I sounded as convincing.

Of course I couldn’t see Jesus. I saw nothing. But she so believed and was so convinced He was walking towards her. I felt something, with all that faith, so I joined them. I was excited about the possiblities! I opened my heart to the Lord.

My family was hardly impressed or accepting of my new-found faith. I carried a bible everywhere. I tried to save my parents and my college-aged sisters with 1 John 3:16. First they were humored and then they were downright annoyed. Then my sisters started having fun wth me, making devil horns over me and calling me a freak. My family was not religious. We were Catholic. We believed in hocus- pocus more than salvation. The color red on the door warned off the maloccia or evil. Brown clothe around the neck clothe would send you first class and straight to heaven when you died. After you said something that was not positive or was a ‘god forbid’ type thing, we always, always made the sign of the cross. We worshiped saints. We lit candles. We did not sing and dance and sway and yelp about Jesus Being The Rock Who Rolls My Blues Away.

I was a born again for about 3 years. I swore that my life did changed once I accepted Jesus in my heart. The higher energy faith and power that just didn’t exist in my upbringing, gave me a little push somewhere, though I can’t say where. Although, the teaching that I would go to heaven but my family and friends wouldn’t unless they were save, was stressful and no kid should have to think about that bullshit. And soon after giving up my family and being tired of 6am before school Bible study, I uninvited Jesus in my heart, though according to the camp’s dogma, once He was in, He would never leave. I am pretty certain, that keg parties in the woods, and the sex and the pot pretty much evicted him.

After that I became Atheist. I studied Nietzsch and Kierkegaard. I philosophized. God was dead. Old news. There was nothing but a birth and a death. That’s it. Nothing else. Bang! We’re here. Bang! We’re gone. That’s it. Like a perverse science experiment. Being an atheist was nice because there was nothing I was suppose to behave for, nothing I was suppose to say or feel or believe. I was off the hook. I felt relieved. I began debaucheries.

Then I fell upon the scientific system of yoga. The Mystery started to reveal itself to me slowly, one breath at a time after that first class I stumbled upon in the snowy mountains of Idaho. The teacher had us make a triangle-shape with the pointer fingers and thumbs of both our hands and place it against our third eye, then against our mouth and then our heart. Pure of thought, pure of speech, pure of heart. I liked the sound of that, it was a new language connected to nothing but me. I liked putting myself in the shape of a triangle and using my own breath as the breeze through me, empowering my every fiber, every joint, muscles, my organs, my thoughts. One stretch deeper and one step closer to opening my heart to myself. As I started literally cleaning out my body, a body full of dogma, guilt, limitations, anger, Jim Beam and Cokes, Marlboro Reds, and self-loathing, I opened new rooms, a few more glands, pathways. I worked with color and visuals and sound. I had some hope. This was fun and it made me feel really, really good. Too good. I had to look nowhere but inside myself for this bliss. What a concept.

Then I got into Earth and Goddess Spirituality. The candle lighting and herbs and the rituals and the sensuality of connecting with the core of the planet, the fiber of a leave, the cell of a flower, the spirit of tree. Wandering lost around the soft carpet of forest, sitting naked on hot rocks at Mexican beaches, lighting candles under oak grooves, bleeding into the earth while my body held the language of the moon, making love inside caves at Joshua Tree, offering up gems to the sea. All these were the only churches I would ever attend. The mysticism was similar and it resonated with what I loved about Catholicism; ritual, fire, smell, sound, repetition, an emphasis on The Mother. Earth-Based spirituality offered me stories on all fragments of my psyche and soul: Brigit The Healer and Poet, Hecate the Midwife, Gaia, The Earth Mother, Diana the Moon. It taught me that the here and now and the dirt under my feet are all such blessed Mysteries. It is all there is right now to love and celebrate and take care of. Heaven is only a potential. Potential is a mere idea a hopeful thought, not a reality.

I studied a bit of Hinduism: slightly too much like a normal religion. Then some Tao, but I’m not simple enough and I spent awhile sitting in zazen, not thinking about Zen, but I certainly wasn’t clever enough for all that, althoughBeginners Mind is what I will always strive for.

And for years I got some grounding with the Rastafarians. Their philosophy of I and I (there is no you, or me or us, there is only I and I and that is not two but one) is one of the only dogmas I have been able to keep and pass one. And the belief in filling the body with ital food (what we would probably called whole and organic and home cooked and vibrant) has always been something I admire, respect, and try very hard to follow.

When I gave birth is when it all came together. To trust birth is to trust life, to trust life is to truly love and to trust love is to feel The Mystery like an age old storm. I opened up completely through Love for the first time when I birthed. For real. All the teachings and paths and faiths crossed and made a perfect circle right in the middle. And in that middle spot, perfectly still and humming and balanced…that is where life source dwells for me. I can go there because I am there. When I don’t feel it, it’s because I have wandered from it, learning about life in my own way. I don’t think it ever leaves me know. Each day that I look at my kids I am reminded by who they were and how they came and how they are as they stand in front of me. And that brings me back to that spot. I am so grateful for birth giving me what it did when i truly least expected it to. I finally understood that what I am and what I can do and where I can take myself is what that Mystery is. The Source. The Universe. Me.

Like the most delicious bread of life, I took a pinch of this and a spoon of that and shake of something else. The I have no religion. I would never describe myself as a firm believer in anything. But there is something in everything, a common thread, silvery and pure among a very old and outdated quilt. I believe in the mystery of all—- this beauty and pain. In the random acts of coincidence that occur in my life, in the connections I make with people and nature, in the unknown spiral of birth and death and this small speck of fleshy life we are in right now, right here. It’s like the words I heard over and over at those Saturday evening Novenas with my grandpa: the glorious mystery, the sorrowful mystery. Do I know where I come from? No. Do I know where I am going? No. Do I feel emotionally attached to that lack of knowledge? Sometimes, but I try not to. I do try to always feel that blessed, sparkly, sensual, and for me, fiery presence within me and around me. It’s the mystery. The mystery is me. And my kids. And all of you.

The prayer Mia said tonight is non-offensive and fine. I personally don’t associate God with a gender and the Him part of bothers me a bit, but that’s me. Not her. And I want her to be exposed to all positive forms of worship and faith. She has the right to choose her own path. My own childhood stint with my born-again Christianity did no harm. I may have really annoyed and offended those around me and I may have over-looked hypocrisy that I can see clearly now, but that short time where Jesus Was My Savior only made me a happier, more excitable person. It taught me faith. It wasn’t faith in something I could further on my own path, but it taught me to explore what else there could be. Being Catholic didn’t create totally irreparable damages. I work on the guilt and the sex stuff and female oppression business daily. But the rituals and the smells and the food and the faith in a Mother Goddess and all things magical are things I will keep. I am still an atheist, in my own way. I hold tight to questioning all and everything and coming up with nothing much. I will always be a yogi and a witch. I am forever a temple dancing goddess. But these are not religions. It’s art and life. And I got to experience it all. Ican never stop my children from fulfilling their spiritual calling through denial and inexperience. They must seek and find and stumble into just as I have. Even if Mia decided to become a charismatic evangelical Christian saving souls and on the look out for Satan on every corner, then that will be her choice. I won’t blame the prayer she learned at three. Because I know nothing (thank you, Zen) and I can’t do anything besides live like all is a Mystery and act as if that Mystery stems from Love, Pure Love.

Writing this has been good to let go of my judgments on that little prayer. There really is no right or wrong. There just is. There just is. If we feel it, then it is ours, yours. I and I. So who cares if my daughter says a prayer in school. Maybe when I go in to do my co-op day and it’s snack time, I will teach them our version of blessing food. Bringing in light from the Universe and filling our hands with it and gently sending it through to our food, filling it’s substance up with healing nourishment and energy. Maybe I will even say something about how Love really is the only thing we need.

Om.

The following is a post I wrote back in the beginning of May. I never felt like it was really finished. But after reading my meremortal friends intelligentle piece I knew it was time to post it, regardless of the turns of events and choices I have made in my life. After reading Leigh’s writing and re-reading this post (which was orginally titled: Almost A Veg) I knew I had to make another choice. Again.

I have become an almost vegetarian. ( I’m not gonna give up sushi. Period. ) My daughter Mia has also become a vegetarian. Last week I woke up and told her from now on we don’t eat meat. That once in a while when our bodies need it, we will eat certain kinds of wild fish.

No more bacon, ,mama?

No.

I love bacon, mama.

I know, Rosie. But we don’t want to eat a pig anymore.

Okay, mama. Why don’t we want to eat a pig?

Because it’s not nice. The pig gets cut and they are not honored in death.

Period.

And that was that.

I’ve made this decision not because I am convinced we as humans should not consume the meat of other living animals. As a matter of fact, I think meat is a wonderful protein choice but only if an animal is honored in the hunt and there is no waste in the kill. At that point I tend to feel that the animal and the human have lived it’s karma. But about 99% of the meat we consume is what I all baaaaaad karma meat. Besides the karma factor, the meat is mostly a corn by-product and the industrialization of the corn-meat-fossil fuel connection has sickened me to the degree that I have been forced to dropped meat from my plate (and this is hard because I like the taste of a juicy BBQ pork tenderloin). Unless I find a local farmer who is TRULY grass-feeding and slow grazing cattle and chicken, and/or my husband goes out to the hunt himself, my mouth is shut to the stuff.

Although it’s been expensive, and at times has been a drain to our pathetically humble bank account, the only meat (or dairy, especially dairy) that has even entered my house in the past 4 years has been certified organic and if I can’t find organic than it must be labeled “free-range” or “natural”. For a long time that made me feel better about feeding my family meat. Most of the meat I bought was produced from a place called Harris Ranch which is owned by the Sunflower Market chain…the market I frequent the most. In my heart of hearts I often questioned where this meat was coming from, but never really found the answers I wanted from the people behind the meat counter. Sunflower claims their farm animals are given no hormones or pesticides, but after research I found their cows are all fattened up with Midwestern corn. Cows eat grass naturally, they graze on greens; the fresh and lovely greens growing from nutrient rich soil, even the weeds and wild herbs that grow naturally are giving the cows life force and health and vibrancy which in turn makes good meat. Although Harris ranch claims their cows are all in the highest quality ‘feed lots’ I could not get in contact with anyone who would send me an actual a photo of those cows and those feedlots. Harris Ranch cows also end up behind the meat counter at mainstream grocery stores such as Ralph’s, Vons, Safeway, Costco, Albertson’s and Food For Less. So all this time I thought that Sunflower Market was a special place with special meat and although I do believe in most of their products and I appreciate they keep their organic items at a lower rate than most places, their meat just ain’t up to par unless you like eating 50% corn with your flesh. If you don’t live in the southwest or Colorado where the small chain exists, Sunflower has a local-owned feel and farmer’s market type ambience and I don’t want to bash them because they are a much better grocery than most, but in reality they have they same meat as some of the biggest grocery chains in the West.

I began really questioning where my food came from and how it got to my plate after reading an article in Mother Earth News by Barbara Kingsolver entitled Lily’s Chickens . Her article questions the amount of energy and fuel wasted in the productions and the transportation of foods…organic or not. And how good these foods are for us and our local/global community at large. Do you have any idea how much energy is used to package and ship those only half-way decent strawberries from across the country? Or that organic asparagus from Argentina? Apparently it’s a whole lot more than the price of gas you use to get to the market to buy them. I read this article right after I birthed Sula and looking down at this new little life and thinking that what I fed me feeds her and I decided that I needed to find a local farm who could provide me with some meat, eggs, goats milk and vegetables. How hard could it be? I found what seemed to be the most productive independent family farm in the rural Phoenix area, about a 40 minute drive from my house. What I was going to use in gas (it was significantly less than what it takes to package my green beans from Mexico) seemed worth the quality and locality of the food. The unfortunate thing was The Little Farm In Gilbert had little vegetables to harvest, no meat for sale and no goats for milk and cheese. They did have tons of fresh eggs and the potential for some beef a couple years down the road. But it was hardly worth the drive for the eggs. The more research I did the more I found out I couldn’t find any locally raised meat from small farms, hormone and corn free. So I gave up. Sort of. I grew some veggies in my own garden. I headed to the very small farmers markets in Phoenix and got some more produce. Got my bread from a local source and tried to find everything else that was grown/cultivated and packaged in surrounding states. And continued to eat meat (and fed my daughter the same meat) from the store, blessing it and giving thanks to the animal that gave it’s life for us to eat and hoping that it had some goodness left in it.

Last week I began reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the new book by Michael Pollen. It was a reminder to me that my desires to change my diet should be urgently put into action. It reminded me that food is utterly and absolutely political and my choices in eating are just as my choices in voting. If I keep eating meat from anywhere other than my local farmer whose life is growing grasses and guiding animals to eat it or from our own hunting then I am supporting a machine that I no longer want in charge of my public life. It sounds drastic, I know, but each time we eat a piece of meat that comes from a farm (organic or not) we are using more fossil fuel than when we take a week long road-trip in a car. The energy it takes to create and process the feed (corn), ship the corn, distribute the corn to the cattle, slaughter and kill the cattle, process the beef, package the beef, and ship the beef off to the store…is feeding an industry: an industry that keeps us fixin’ for oil.

According to Pollen it all boils down to the kernal of corn. A close cousin of maize, corn is known as sacred and divine to Native American, but in our present day culture, it is a crop that keeps this nation of greed and gluttony running. We have become dependent on these little niblets. Our body is now used to massive amounts of it. We eat in our beef and chicken, we eat in almost every processed food you can name in the form of modified corn starch, corn oil or corn syrup. Check out the labels, you’ll be shock at how many foods have corn something or other in the first 3 ingredients. Our government subsidizes the farming industry to keep growing this cheap from of energy that reaches or plates in forms of animal fat, surgar and starch. Corn is making the cows nice and fat so that they can be a good commodity and slaughtered close to 4 years younger than if they were grass-fed. Corn is also making us obese. While we are warned that are children are fatter than ever before, living on less than whole foods; one fast-food meal of chicken nuggets (chickens fed with corn, breaded in corn meal and deep friend in corn oil, fries flavored with High Fructose Corn Syrup -HFCS-, and fried in corn oil and a soda which is comprised mostly of HFCS. We are talking about ½ pound of corn used for one fast-food meal. That same meal needs the equivalent of 1.3 gallons of oil to be produced. T government signs bills designed to keep the river of corn flowing into the mouths of cattle and anything else it can possible make. Corn is money.

Pollen also brings the industrial organic food chain to the discussion. Although we all know that foods laden with pesticides are not good for us, are all organic foods are so much better for our community? Are those Venezulan organic blueberries from Whole Foods any better than the local farm that might be across town that might use some minor pesticides? While shipping the blueberries over, they were exposed to numerous gasses and pretty much bathed in environmental pollutants. Not to mention the amount of oil used to get them here. The non-organic berries may or may not have pesticides and they grown locally. Which choice is better for the family and the community at large? This is a question I must start asking myself.

Pollen visits an organic chicken farm in Petaluma, CA. Rosie’s Chickens. Many a night my family and I have enjoyed Rosie’s chicken wings, which we’ve coated in extra virgin olive oil, salt and fresh-cracked pepper and maybe even a little sprinkler of chili powder or cumin and broiled until gooey and crispy. Chicken Wings priced at 8 bucks a pound and named Rosie’s better be good karma meat, right? They claim their Rosie’s are free-range and cage-free. Pollen visited Rosie’s farm and in his eyes the bottom line was that those birds were crammed in a coup, feather to feather with no room to move. At 2 weeks of age a little open window to the outside world is offered to these petrified chickens whose life until that point has been in a dark, crammed coup, not knowing what is up or down and pecking at each other to find food. No chicken dares to venture out into the scary world once they are offered the open window. Who can blame them? These little chickens are NOT clucking through the grass, happily and joyfully until they are fat and ready to made into nurishment for us. Instead, they are treated closely like any other industrial chicken farm. Stuffed in a feces filled corridor with no room to breath. Granted, they don’t have hormones injected into them and their corn-meal is not treated with pesticides. I think that this does make the Rosie’s of the world better chickens to eat. But reading the literature Whole Foods gives out regarding Rosie’s Chickesn, you might be misguided into thinking your poultry comes from a little chicken utopia, where your Rosie lives a sweet and free life until she is ritualistically killed for food. Not the case. Between Rosie’s Organic chicken and the non-organic, truly free-range, grass and vegetable fed chicken farm that may be 1/2 hour away from your home, go with the later. Organic means something. But not enough. We are at a point were we need to understand food beyond organic. We need to look at the system as a whole. By importing fish, meats and produce from lands far away, organic or not, we are contributing to a Factory Farming Machine. By supporting a meat and processed food industry that has relies on factory farmed, heavily sprayed corn and corn-based ingredients, we are not only supporting the Factory Farm Machine, we are supporting the Military Industrial Complex which depends on War which depends on our addiction of fossil fuels.

I know it is not easy. To take the time to re-evaluate and re-organize your families eating style, to find pure food products. To grow your own food. It’s a challenge, a human challenge. It’s kind of a test to us living her on Earth which provides us with an abundance of good things if only we can find the right tools and path to garner them. But somewhere there is a way we can go back to feeding ourselves and our children for health and energy and goodness. Somewhere there must be a way to find foods that connect us with the deep, dark nourishing soils filled with the essence to preserve our planet and avoid extinction. There is away to bind and connect us to an honorable way utilize the chains of life. I still have not found it and I by no means eat or live the way I dream to eat or live. But I can keep dreaming and taking these little steps to actualize.

If anyone has resources or advice, I am all ears.

Over a month of eating nothing besides a piece of fish a week and we feel great. My husband still had not made the cross-over but while we are here in Ojai he promises to leap into pesca-a-tarianism. It’s too confusing for Mia to see him eat meat while we don’t. I feel so much better about the choices in protein I make: lentils, beans, quinoa, tofu, nuts eggs and oils. Just today Mia says to me:

Mama remember the pig?

What pig?

The pig that got cut and then he was bacon? I don’t eat animals mama. That’s just mean.

4 months later.

We have failed. When we were in NY at my parents place we broke down and gnawed on flesh. There were days I just did not have it in me to fight for my right to cook something else. My mother is queen of her kitchen, it is her one source of control and to be able to make a meal in their she either has to be sleeping or gone. Since she never sleeps, just “rests her eyes” and she is rarely gone for long since the town is quite small, I did little cooking.

After reading my Leigh’s piece about how satisfying and joyful her experience has been being meat-free I am inspired, ashamed, excited, motivated, guilty; all things that mean action will be taken. Starting right now, today, I no longer eat meat.

I no longer eat meat until there is a better way.