Garden Update

Some irises have appeared! It was a nice surprise- I didn't know there were irises in the backyard.Here's how the herb and lettuce beds look freshly seeded. Now don't let appearances fool you, because below the surface of this dirt lies a holy mammoth of eager seeds! Here's the plan:There is a little tiny blue finch in the backyard, and she lives inside this little dead tree. She's feeding tiny babies somewhere in there. I went to see if I could see them, but I didn't.
At the moment I was snooping about trying to see into the tree, she landed beside me and asked, "weee oooo? weeee oooo?" It was the sweetest little song. She sang awfully politely given that I was sticking my nose in her house. She had a fly for her babies.
There are also baby birds underneath the backdoor overhang! Sometimes I stand next to the backdoor on the inside and listen to them peep. I thought there were four- but looking at this picture I see another little beak- that makes five!
Aww! You guys are so cute! That's all I've got for now on the garden update.

On Friday we went to listen to Sergei Boutenko at Glen's cafe. That's Glen on the left then me, Sergei, and Steve.
Sergei's traveling about sharing info on foraging for wild edible greens. Wild greens are free, super-nutritious, and often grow like weeds! Here's an educational page on his website. Also, in case you haven't come across his mother Victoria's book, here are some Green Smoothie recipes to add to your own magical mystery tour.

Yesterday Steve and I celebrated a friend's Romanian wedding. It started out with a many hour Greek Orthodox ceremony in a small Brooklyn church. When the ceremony was over they broke out homemade wine and sweetbread amidst the pews, and we all imbibed next to golden icons. At the reception we danced to accordions and such! I learned that a Romanian celebration involves holding hands in a circle and spinning around endlessly for hours so that you may laugh in waves and yell, "HAY!!!" just because.

Peach Tree Sun

Ever get the feeling that you're being winked at?

Here's how the whole Sun Panel is looking...

***

I wonder who we're talking to. When Mother Teresa said that she treats everyone as Jesus- I thought that was a figure of speech. But what if it's true, that each one is Jesus? What?!

When I would cop an attitude as a kid my Mom would say, "I don't know who you think you're talking to, young lady!" No kidding! That's pretty profound. I was asking myself yesterday- why do I paint? Why do I talk? I mean, I write a little in this blog- but I am writing all day long! I keep a word document open everyday and just write stuff. Like the poem about a Turtle in a Tree. Curious? I am too:

There’s a turtle in a tree!
Come see! Yelled He.
What? What?! Say We.
How could that be?
Did you say turtle in a tree?
This we gotta see.

By Jove!
It’s A….
TURTLE IN A TREE!

How funny!
How absurd!
Even the birds were like,
“Oh my word…”

We were so astounded to see
Her swimming up there merrily…
Turtle in a tree!

Anyway, I thought to myself- maybe stop expressing. There's not really anything there. And inside welled up this enormous force of I WILL! I WILL! Though how absurd that God/You and God/The Bird and God/My Toes... that all that God would require not only a leaf, but a picture of a leaf. That's very silly! David Wolf says, "When in doubt, choose the silliest option." I got good news, and I got bad news, God. The good news is that we are living in a very silly world. The bad news is that we are living in a very silly world. ha ha!

Some Calvin Hobbes from Dirk...
Here's some new awesome hummingbird photos! Introduced to me by Sherri Zampelli, taken by Michael Zampelli.

***

The most amazing treat today!
I was sitting under the awning out back, just finished my lunch and was staring out. I heard a tiny sound: a teep! It wasn't sparrow, and by the little burst of air I knew it was close. And I thought, "Oh! Is it...?" And then zooooooom in comes hummingbird for a quick taste of the purple pansies. This is the BEST! And then what did she do? She zoomed right over! Right between my eyes! I could hear the hum of her wings as she lingered there staring. Hi! (I squinted. Does an eye look like a flower?) She was very fast! No she was there to visit. And then she spoke, "teep!" and flew around my head. And she's back! More to say! teep! teep! She did a fancy swirl around and then flew away. Wooooowwwwww. I had a big goofy grin on my face. And then I wondered, "What did she say?" "She wants more flowers." Oh. Of course. More flowers.

No wait... sure it wasn't something more profound? "Flowers. She'd like some food." Oh right! Food! I feel quite charmed! I just got bossed around by a miniature shiny being that's like- a flying heart! I painted her last night and she visited me today! Now I gotta plant some more flowers!

***

Here's my little girl! Isn't she a cutie pie? I like how she's making eye contact with the frog over her shoulder. (Frogger's visible in a pic below)And I finished the fish. Doesn't he look phallic?
These women are from a painting by Klimt called Water Snakes. It might be a woman with herself, and it might be two women together. Either way- Klimt... he knew a few things. And that's why all the women in Vienna clambered to have him do their portrait.
For instance, he knew this:
You know that story of Danae? Zeus made love to her in a stream of golden light. What a great story. What a great instructional story. What if the womb can contain light? If it can, that's important information. And it would sort of change the anatomical identity of Isis and Nephthys.

In Indonesia, if you're a woman and Muslim, you probably don't have a clitoris. Or labia. Know why? THEY CUT THEM OUT. But that's in Islam. Remember how the Catholic Church used to burn women alive? Oh! Or remember that hundred year thing in Spain where they'd sexually mutilate women from the inside out? And then kill them? For assisting in childbirth? Because that was evil and against God's will? Because women deserved to suffer?

You ever wonder if maybe a woman's pleasure is the key to something? Heads up for that golden light.

*

Adding a peach tree and a fish...I'm watching this little robin hop along in the grass. Watching from the window, I don't think he sees me. Or he doesn't care that I'm there. He hops and in the same motion he dips his beak into the dirt and lifts out a worm- it goes down the gullet. Robin. I watch him hop. Robin doesn't know anything about worms. Robin doesn't seem to even be looking for worms. But Robin dips his beak down and there is a worm.

This morning Steve and I sat in the backyard. You can blend cilantro with banana and lemon and water and drink it. Some kind of butterfly zoomed into the hydrangea bush. That's not a butterfly. Yrrrryyyyooooommmm!!!! It zooms past us lightening fast! Split the horizon of air across our eyes! That's a hummingbird! She hovers above for a moment- and she's gone. Well, how did she get here? Where does she go?

Into the blue again... into the silent water
(My God, what have I done?)

I saw her poking about in that hydrangea bush. There's no blooms at all. Maybe she's looking for a nest.

Back to School!

Steve and I went to Stafford High School this morning to help present at the Health Fair. The students chose their classes from a number offered. Mine was called "Color and Self-Expression." We had fun! Here's a picture of Cassie in the middle of our fabric swatch experiment. If you want to know which colors look best on you, you can just hold up a bunch of colored fabrics to your face!
And here's us talking about Sandalwood and Frankincense- we smelled different essential oils and talked about how they made us feel or what they reminded us of.Smell ya later!

Completing The Story

Say there, Lovey Dovey, how about a little duck duck goose? Dear Angelina Hart's been out and about filming- thought you might like to see what the geese have been up to too...
Okay! So here we go with these cute little cherubs. The orange rose there is copied from my new friend, Dirk, and his "San Fran Rose" painting. Here's his website. Dirk's been telling me all kinds of stuff about his research of the Gnostic Gospels and whatnot. He said if somebody does LSD they'd understand the Book of Revelation a lot better. I asked, "You think that'd be a good idea?" "Absolutely not. But if one were to take it one would learn a lot about the Book of Revelation." He just turned 76.

The other night on Facebook I was looking at pictures of my sorority friends- they had a big get-together in Charleston. And I thought to myself, "Aww. They're so pretty and normal and well-balanced." I didn't get invited to the get-together, and I thought, "Man, now I'm just too weird to be around." And later that day I was like, "No! I'm totally normal! I wear high heels! And I have great hair!" Right after that I was conversing on whether or not Jesus was a bisexual hippy. And that's when I realized, that in fact, there's no hope in the normal arena. Is a lost cause. That's okay...

Yes, I Believe In Me!
So You Believe In You!

Here are the little angels in the middle of the piece. It's a portrait of Katie and me when we were 4 and 3 years. Almost there on this part- I'm going to add some gold paint to the wings.
So... I'm completing The Story right now. Am I excited about it? You betcha.

Completing this piece also completes the Her Good Heart DVD- a movie of our One Night Show this past November. It is awesome.

White Moose!

Oh my gosh! Two albino moose have been spotted in Michigan TOGETHER. What?! What are the chances?! Astronomical!
Some tribes say that albino moose are re-incarnations of tribal elders. Two buddies back in action! The moose is the largest member of the deer family- eating grass and mosses, sometimes underwater. And you know what? Moose are born with their eyes open. Oh the shape shifters come and go, and this hour they come back.

Thee Baptist

Mary Magdalene

"Spread out the oil... If you like it you can slide it up. Love the day when we will never stop. You.You make a grown man cry. You. You make a dead man come." ROLLING STONES

Please May I Introduce You...

...to my dear friend Roger! He is the youngest director to show at the Sundance Film Festival, and he's just made a generously artful website, full of picture goodies and writing. Enjoy! rogeringraham.com

Johnny, break it down

John the Baptist! What a being! Jesus' cousin. He's living in the desert, right? Preaching to all these people... "Get yourself in the water! The Man is right around the corner! Come on now! For the love of Christ!"

I love Leonardo da Vinci's painting of John the Baptist (shown in the post below). If I had the means to buy anything on earth, that would be one of the things I'd acquire. It's also his last painting... beautiful da Vinci... he would buy caged birds just to release them.

I was thinking of that painting and the line, "She's so good looking that she looks like a man," kept turning over in my head. (I'd always thought it was 'that' rather than 'but'.) It's a lyric that has puzzled me since I was so tiny. And I was remembering what Jesus said about woman becoming man and man becoming woman. Gender is a social construction. The actual sex of a person is the physical reality. Annie Lennox and David Bowie amaze me with their "becoming" the other gender for performance. It's like, "See? I'm the other, but I'm not. For like an hour, and then I'm back to the other one." So it's not real, you know? And yet gender is so deeply embedded into our perceived realities around sex, right and wrong, human value.... that for a woman to become man and a man to become woman... is to transcend our cultural blindness. Not in a way that I'll shave my head and wear leather, but in a way that I can be with you without engaging you as a certain prototype, without knowing you via any identity.

So it was appropriate to match Leo's St John painting with the Polythene Pam lyrics, and how totally cool is it that it continues "She's the kind of a girl that makes the News of the World," and John was the first guy to actually preach "The Good News"? Awesome.

You know how the birds sing in the morning before the sun rises? If we have no clock, and there is no sun to be seen, but there are birds tweeting in the night- we know by their singing that the dawn is near. John the Baptist is a singing bird that knows the sun is coming. A bird in the water. (What else floats in water? Little small rocks! Churches! A DUCK!)

The water is the emotional realm. And John is like, "Ahem." (clears throat) "AHEM!" pointing to the water. In the early morning at dawn as the winds are stilled, the water is serene: glass, a mirror. It shines the moon, and the bright heart of the sun is reflected upon it. The rays of the sun move through the water, streaming rays that light up the underworld of fishes and newts and snakes and turtles and frogs and little small rocks. The water reflects the sky, "As above so below" and if we seek the sky then we seek the water, and if we seek water we find the sky, the sun, all the treasures of the underworld and the over world arching across the mirror.

* * * *

On the Fun-with-Androgyny subject... is important to mention that Da Vinci's sexual relationships were with men, as was the same for his contemporary, Michelangelo. They were two prominent image-creating powerhouses who were not attracted to the female form, and the women they painted often looked like men. The making of women into men or boys is still visually being done in the beauty industry; it is pop-sexy for a woman to look boyish. Being an old woman isn't honored in America. I just wanted to bring that up: that the over-slimming, over-youthening of women is not a bandwagon I want to be riding.

St John the Baptist

But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go

Soon we'll be away from here
Step on the gas and wipe that tear away
One sweet dream came true... today
Came true... today
Came true... today...yes it did
One two three four five six seven,
All good children go to Heaven

Well you should see Polythene Pam
She's so good-looking but she looks like a man
Well you should see her in drag dressed in her polythene bag
Yes you should see Polythene Pam
Yeah yeah yeah

Get a dose of her in jackboots and kilt
She's killer-diller when she's Jacked to the Hilt
She's the kind of a girl that makes the "News of the World"
Yes you could say she was attractively built
Yeah yeah yeah
(LENNON) A woman? No, a man. Or is it St Joan the Baptist? O no wait- that's Arc. Joan of Arc. Rosetti, what does St Joan look like? Umm... hmm.

A Dirty Weekend

Steve and I took a trip to Virginia this weekend to do a mountain biking / running race with our pals! Behold, the dirty evidence...
After that we all got cleaned up and had some dinner together. That's Josh on the left with his son Cole. His Mom is Betsy- she's right next to me. Between Steve and me is our pal Jon who drove down from Connecticut with us, and to the right there is dear Dana. Spent a lot of time in college training and laughing with these friends- it was so so good to be together.

Jesus Casts the Demonic Spirits into a Herd of Swine Who then Jump off a Cliff.

Is he doing that thing again?
*
Years ago, a friend coaching me on nutrition told me, "Don't eat pork. Don't don't eat anything pig."

"Why?"

"Pigs have a suspicious likeness to humans in their gene structure. The confusion can weaken the immune system. Not only that... there are old stories of pigs and humans cross breeding..."

"Ew. Wait. What's that mean?"

"Uh- nevermind. But no pig."