Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Announcement! This Friday....



There's two because we're going to have double the fun! Please come say hi if you can. :)

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Fair Weather

I did m'first outdoor fair! My friend Craig the photographer invited me and we sat in the shade shooting the breeze most of the time.
Craig took this picture of a woman hard at work. Since the curtains are billowing I think this means he literally shot the breeze.
Here's the new project! I'm painting this on the kitchen wall above the sink. The image is yellowy because I just thought to take a picture of it tonight, though the wall is actually white. This design is an illustration by John Marro for a new vegan restaurant in San Francisco called Gracias Madre. These people are so cool! And I just love John's picture! He made something really pretty of the Lady here and I'm much obliged to have her company.

Am beginning to know that the greatest gifts in our lives are so big that they are difficult to perceive. I've been unclear about the meaning of the word "humble" for a long time. Today I feel that one aspect of it is thankfulness. Just thankful to have a body, thankful to be able to breathe. Thankful to live in a place with water and food and peace. All the help from our friends! It's a pleasure to cogitate on the prayers that come with existence and the ones that have been tucked into this life. People that held us as babies wished so many beautiful things for us. All kinds of beings who love us hold a secret dream for us, and that's a whole lot of goodwill floating around.

a tree for prosperity
a stone for posterity
music for the one second heaven
flowers for the new day's birth

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Yeah



When I get good, real good-
I'm gonna appreciate everybody everything every being every moment all the time, and when that's gone I'll appreciate that too.
Yeah.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Weave the Web

Halo Kitty Cats!

I had a friend that would greet my sister and I with that each time she saw us. "Kitty Cats! How you doing?" ...in some kind of fake Dutch accent.

First things First:

The One Night Show
is Saturday, November 13th at 7pm.

If you can be here please be here. Tickets will be available in September.

A few weeks ago I started a two week green juice cleanse for cleanliness, beauty and discipline. And at the same time I was also bit by a small tick, which infected my blood with a bacteria. The nature of the bacteria is that it first lives in the blood and then bores into the bone and later the brain and heart. So you have to kill it early and with aggressiveness. Maybe it's fair to say that I've been re-purifying my blood. And all's well of course. It's interesting how some microorganisms are compatible with human life; they can be parasitic but they're parasitic in a way that's not too demanding on the host. Some parasites, though, actively disintegrate the host.

Yesterday was such a day that I poured myself a glass of wine before the sun set, and rocked back and forth in my chair. I've seen people use wine to comfort themselves so I gave it a try. Early into my attempt Steve knocked on the door and said, "Did you forget the farm share?" I did! So I went over to the farm and as soon as I walked on the earth farmers Caroline and Ronda said, "Shannon come here, come here, you have to learn about the hookworm. It's disgusting but you have to see this." On the first towering tomato plant in a luscious row, on an eye-level leaf was a large plump green caterpillar. This caterpillar was covered in innumerable small elliptical white bumps or eggs that sprung from its back, like a thick-quilled porcupine. Caroline said that each of these white things was a pupa from a wasp that had deposited the larva underneath the skin of the caterpillar. "These pupa are eating the caterpillar as it eats the tomato plant, and eventually they are going to suck this plump caterpillar dry and hatch into wasps." I felt a gag coming on. She showed me a black shriveled caterpillar remain with some of the pupa still growing on it. "It seems the larva are deposited beneath the skin and eat their way out."

I am more than awed at the power of what can get under our skin. Isn't a joke!

Last night I felt a wild fountain come rising up within me. It was a ruthless devotion to breathing and living. To self-determination. There were knights in white satin (there are!) galloping wildly through the woods, mud flying, swords ready. And there was an elephant, she and I touched head to head. Her massive imposing presence, her nose soft and sweet. This human world is full of junk, full of infestations. We kill and hunt every day. Otherwise look- we end up a caterpillar sucked dry before the transformation occurs. Guard your life! Kill what needs to be killed beneath the skin. There is so much that can die. We are powerful hunters affecting our ecology. A grown man has a backbone. We can't be real men if we don't determine ourselves, if we don't know when to strike. And I think we have to be grown men before we can be grown women.

Can we get dizzy from our oxygen and fall down from the intensity, and then rise up again from the intensity. Who can hunt without disdain, who can pursue with honor? The exceptional liver of life is one who is not eager to die, but one who is eager to breathe. Everday the sun shines and it bursts and burns into itself. The sun dies too. But really, are you gonna buy that crap? The spring rises from the earth and bubbles into the sphere. The air comes down and touches the sphere. I saw us a pyramid, the apex. The narrow eye of the needle in the middle of the hour glass. The place where each grain passes through. The powers funnel down in 3-D to the top of the pyramid. The powers rush up from below and swirl inside to the top of the pyramid. And we meet. In equanimity. In complete terror. Terror and wonder untie. Horror and Beauty kiss. Virtue and Squalor weave a thread. The Fresh and the Putrid exchange wafts of floating air. Matter and Anti-matter explode into starry fire. A power rips vicious ravines across the landscape of land and sky, cracking open the infinitely dark expanse. The rain pours down from the sky. The water breaks forth from the rock, miraculous. Dinosaur changes to bird, clothed in the golden fleece. Eternal cloth. Fleshly dress crumbles. Fleshly dress is the eternal. The spot on the back of spider lives forever. Weave your web, catch your prey. Weave your web, let it all pass through. Weave your web, decorate the world. Weave your web, sparkle in the morning dew. Weave your web, billow in the breeze. Weave your web, let your progeny hang from a thread and mature upon it. Weave your we. Weave your we. Weave your web. Weave your web. Weave your web.