Heart of a Djinn

A Djinn sits amidst a vast land, without interruption or sound. All that keeps him company is a dried rose and his memory.

How would it feel in that moment for an immortal? How immense the memory and his heart? I know at 29 years how enormous silence feels when memory keeps me company. I couldn’t imagine thousands of years of them. Would the heartache of loss render me numb? Or would the necessity of love be what keeps me going?

I have lost two of the closest men in my life, and what it has done is branded me with the knowing that we cannot fear loss. For even in the most blistering moments of grief I did not regret loving them. If anything I wish I loved them more. In those moments I promised myself to not fear loving again. I slept out in the desert for days after losing my partner, and I stared up at the sky repeating the words ‘again and again and again’ as to not forget.

This painting is a magnification of this heartache. This divinity of witnessing the heart. May we remain tattooed in the messages of loved ones and hold them with reverence. May we look forward with a heart open to loving. May we walk this endless place with an unrelenting trust in the falling.

Heirloom

A few years back, when I lived in Santa Fe, NM, I was driving home and saw an old beaten table behind a furniture store. This table was covered in paint, coffee rings, scribbles, and generations of stories. I was so in love my knees were weak. After my U-turn and conversation with the store owner (who seemed surprised I wanted such a piece of ‘junk’) I was the new owner. They would deliver the table within the day.

My enthusiasm soon came to an end, that is, for when the delivery man arrived I saw that they had sanded and polished away all of the stories. My eyes welled up in tears.

‘What did you do!?’ I exclaimed. Uncharacteristically comfortable with displaying my hurt.

‘We fixed it for you!’ He beamed.

‘No, no….I loved it before.’ I said. In the back of my head yelling ‘YOU BURNED A LIBRARY!’

He seemed hurt, which made my hurt worse for it had nowhere to go. I forgave…albeit painfully.

What lingered with me after this experience was the longing I have for heirlooms. Seeds from grandmother’s sunflowers, family recipes, old stories and traditions passed along from one hand to another. They are all a ‘culture’ in that they multiply and feed upon the spirit of those that pass it along. As stories are told they grow richer and more complex like a sourdough start. A lullaby acquires the melody of grandmother and trills from mother, soon to be sung to a granddaughter with a new vibrato.

And though endings are inevitable, the fact we can choose to keep something alive is quite the gift. What an honor it is to do so. To tell the story one more time, so say their name one more time. To grow another sunflower and pass its seed. It is a holy thing and it makes me all choked up.

I painted this piece as symbol of devotion to the practice of keeping things alive. A woman sits in a patch of her heirloom strawberries next to her friend a big cat. *Fun fact- this is actually a marionette tiger I found at an antique store years ago and have loved and cared for ever since. I aged the canvas like that old table in Santa Fe I loved so much. Maybe this painting will one day be an heirloom.

And so, my friend….patch things up to pass them down. Remember a name so you can retell. Memorize a song so you can sing it around a fire.

Decide, in each moment, to keep something here a little longer.

Endless

“Everything I have ever let go of has claw marks in it.” -David Foster Wallace.

I walked outside of a job site the other day and it had just rained. I breathed in as much of that petrichor and grass smell as my lungs could hold, getting dizzy, then exhaled with a bit of impatience just so I could inhale again. I did this for a while. And I found it humorous how grand the metaphor.

Death is scary, life is preferable, for the majority of the population. It is also preferable for the majority of the population to live in a perpetual inhale, unwilling to exhale.

Yet me must. We must make space.

But OH MY, ‘emptiness’ has been baked into our minds as something to fear. ‘Nothingness’ has been written all the way to the antagonist. And death, my sweet death, the joker, the juror, the genie, has been painted black. Yet from its mouth the flowers grow.

For everything must go somewhere right? And what a better place than in ‘nothingness’

In fact, I couldn’t imagine a more pure display of trust and love than being nothing. Arms open to ‘everything’ saying I am yours.

Makes it a bit easier to let something go no? Makes the black a bit easier too. Knowing you are standing inside the bowl that holds the light.

Soothsayer

Soothsayer is Woman.

One that waits for no echo.

I painted her as a representation of power. Not the hierarchal kind but the kind that hums like powerlines. The kind at peace with itself, sufficient enough to no longer be looking back or ahead. A woman who’s eyes face out with an entire horizon of adoration. Of patience.

One that walks heavy to the corners of her hips and speaks just so it rings in her chest.

And when she gives herself to the world, she does so as a gift, not an exchange.

Like letting go of birds.

Alchemy

“Oh yes, Let us burn and build, then burn again. I know I will. Drink when most thirsty, and bathe when my bones are the most cold. For I ache for that ache received within the holy ground of opposites meeting. The place where white can formally meet black in its entirety. Where thirst can meet water in a wild rush. Where warmth is witnessed without having yet forgotten what it feels like to be cold.

Within that space is the purest, un-distilled experience.

In this place, where a dry desert tastes the first drop of rain, and a weeping man meets the eyes of a child smiling, that is when all becomes whole, one, that is God.”

-Me, right now for some reason

Alchemy. An exaltation of our Dream. A prayer to the gold created through transmutation.

This was a tremendously strange experience painting this- in fact when people ask about the process I feel a bit gross casually saying ‘oh it was a vision that came’. Nothing wrong with casual of course (salute to a few men in my past) but when discussing things in the realm of spirit and interconnectivity I hesitate to do any paraphrasing. We either sit down and melt our brains discussing this stuff or we keep it short and sweet.

And those of you who are here reading this are the brain melter type I assume. * Though I don’t recommend assuming often. That gets you into trouble.*

GAH. GET ON WITH IT.

no. I will not. I will not rush.

Last September I took part in a life altering experience with a specific brew of plants. The famous Ayahuasca. It is trendy right now, yes. And it is almost comedic when witnessing the -casual- nature at which it is spoken about. A plant that rips one’s sheet off from their eyes to witness a reality that is SO gargantuan that it overflows from your pupils. It overflows and overflows like rivers and pours into your mouth and into your blood and holds you within the rhapsody of it until you burn away and rebirth yourself.

And so I was. And for the months after this I heard languages and saw visions that would shout me awake at night and slam into my eyelids until I wrote, or sang, or painted them.

This was the loudest of them all, or most persistent. And I was a very willing servant to the creation of it. Fueled energetically by the air around me it seemed. Hours and hours I poured into it without fatigue or doubt (which are old friends)

Now, I am not a huge proponent of articulating the meaning of things. With each articulation of art and love it seems to lose pieces along the way. Like trying to understand a song by studying each note. But I am gonna do it anyway because I am under no obligation to be the person I was a minute ago.

This painting is a representation of a journey towards our Choice. Something I believe sits atop one of the highest pillars - choice. A decision. The decision.

At the bottom of the painting is the ‘earth bodies’. A form that is both the masculine and feminine, duality, and grounded body (the jaguar was a personal addition but I am keeping that significance to myself) standing amidst the protection of its ancestors. This body, us, hands the golden arrow upwards to Dream. She is the vision, the artist, the spirit and muse that sends this arrow into the ether, to all. But without our decision to believe in it, or handing her the arrow, she has nothing to shoot.

Above the dream, is our highest self, the grandmother, the all loving and all knowing that holds our journey and choice within her arms. For it all is as simple as a mother’s love as she hears her child’s first breath, watches her child begin to walk, speak, and awaken to themself. She loves the stumbles just as much as the step. Because she loves them.

And that is everything no?

Just as we love our mistakes as much as success because mistakes are the bricks to build it. We love the package deal of it all. Even not loving something is a package deal with love. HA!

And this painting is it all. It’s the beginning and the end and the fact that both are the same.

It is the Will, the want, the fear and failure, within the hands of what is bigger than us. But also, us.

This all sounds quite grandiose, yes. Dramatic, if you will (a word I often rephrase to simply ‘important’). And it is to me, yea. It means this all to me when I look at it. That being said, so do rocks. And fishes. And poorly frosted birthday cakes.

It’s all part of it’s all its all ‘spart of it all its allpa r its prt all ofit al lllitissslapaopatrospofita itallpoartitodalllllpritsalleverything.

So choose your dream, hand it to the archer, and let it fly….and the journey will begin. As you choose your dream you choose to persist through the shadow and discomfort of the journey to Self. Keep walking. And as you show your will, so will the world show you love. You will break you will burn and you will baptize your ashes with water and spit and tears. You will stand up amidst seeming nothingness and hesitate to continue.

And with each minute of this madness, this story, each second and millisecond within it,

we are met with a choice.

To believe or not to believe in more?

Buck Moon

I painted this during my 27th birthday which coincided with the big Buck Moon. During this time I was using much energy on curating my world…I was swimming amidst a few large decisions that were essentially a choice between comfort and honoring myself. Don’t ya love those? Be uncomfortable and proud, or keep everyone happy except yourself…

Well, thats where I was.

And amidst painting this beauty, I found my answer. ‘It’s your world my darling. Take a good deep breath and do what you gotta do to be proud when you look into your eyes in the mirror…’

This painting is ‘Sovereignty.’ She is a gatekeeper of her world. A world woven and raised by her own hands. With these hands she opens and closes her doors as she wishes. For behind our eyelids is a sacred world that we must be diligent in protecting. A ball…invite only…dress to the nines….a feast…where we cook only our very favorites…a fantasy novel with our preference of dragons ( we all have a preference.)

We must feel free to dance in this world.

We must feel free to weave magic,

and of course, to decorate.

It is ours. It is ours. It. Is. Ours.

Verita

For those who didn’t google it or watch The Boondocks Saints…and then google it, Veritas is latin for Truth. However being as your are reading this blog post one may presume you are well read..and in this day in age one would further presume you are a crippled introverted academic or are on the spectrum. Whichever you are I am sure we would get along. Lets take a moment to compact space and time and shake hands…

Woa woa woa ok…Veritas….

Truth.

I was writing one morning about this predicament we place ourselves in…for seemingly no reason. We figuratively bind ourselves open and vulnerable to the mercy of that which we trust. True trust is blind and brave…or even stupid. I would ask myself this often…are you being romantic and brave by giving your heart away or are you being silly? And why?

Because love. *queue the orchestra*

But eh.

a caesura

I felt like there is more. I mean yes, love is the seed….love is the answer… I’m on board. But I like having a bit more of a footpath back to that concept otherwise there is never anything to talk about.

SO WHY DO WE LIKE THIS. I know I do. I fall in love with an idea, a soul, a croissant from my favorite breakfast place down the road, and then WHAM, I send my heart away with wings made only from faith that it wont be the last time I feel said love.

I’m writing about love now aren’t I.

Do you use question marks on rhetorical questions.

Well let’s stay on this train of thought and see where it goes. Maybe eventually it’ll lead to all my lost trains of thought. I would love to see them again. Probably with all the missing socks.

My head got a bit ahead of my hands when writing this and I think I have reached a conclusion.

Love.

Love is the answer.

The Souls We Found

Water your garden. Pull the weeds. Maybe keep some weeds once you realize how nutritious and misunderstood they are. Maybe pull out some of the Peonies instead.

While I was painting “The Souls We Found’ I was doing some hardcore metaphorical gardening in my life. What relationships are draining my garden of nutrients? Do I have too many plants in here and are they all suffering because of it? Should I instead fertilize and water only my favorites? Do I tell Nancy I don’t want to go to her fucking birthday because I don’t want to just sit and scroll through her dog photos?

You catch my drift?

So I did just this. The gardening part not the Nancy part (she isn’t actually real.) I got my knees dirty and approached my external world with honesty and intuition turned on high. I said goodbyes with gratitude for the teaching, and I said I love you’s to those I didn’t say to enough. I spoke from my chest and gut without doubting my heart, and over time my garden changed. Those who didn’t belong found a place they did, and those who stayed grew full and tall.

I , for once, could lay down in my garden and spread out my arms in love. For I trusted it all, each petal and leaf. Each bug that stomped about. I knew that what grew here in my heart chose to be here, and I chose for it to stay. I trusted it all.

The Souls We Found is a Keeper of this space. A representation of the serenity that comes from the curation of your heart. She is a reminder of the capacity of love once you learn to fully say goodbye and hello, and the souls you may find along the way.

Ship of Theseus

If every part of the ship is replaced is it still the same ship?

Ship of Theseus was painted as a means of working through grief. My partner passed away right as I began the piece. It originally was going to be a woman adorned in fabrics and patterns, and what it turned into was a place to paint memories of things I needed to say goodbye to. I painted sunsets in Hawaii, red cliffs, and silhouettes of us in the snowy woods of our hometown. The funny thing about these memories I was saying goodbye to, is that they already passed. Kindof how memories work.

This is what I thought the challenge of grief was; learn how to say goodbye. Whether it be tears, spreading ashes, screaming, silence, burning belongings... just figure out how to say goodbye.

It wasn’t until mid way through this painting (at the time thinking I was finished) that I simply changed my mind. No dramatic catalyst, just a change of mind.

Nothing needed saying goodbye to. I still burned stuff and screamed a lot but this time in righteous acceptance. What his death needed was acceptance. I seemed to think that accepting was forgiving, and forgiving is forgetting.

Anything but.

Accepting is a bow. And this act lets the water flow again, untethers the wind, and allows the seasons to change. Acceptance of him moving along let me change too, and allow myself to properly finish the painting even if it meant covering up the memories with more paint.

I decided to paint a Keeper of Change. A protector of the path from what was to what now is. An illuminator of Present, surrounded by all that which used to be. Hands outstretched as to say ‘Yes, go…we all were bridges.’

While I was tussling with anger in letting go of the man I once knew, I was blinding myself to what he had become.

He is in my blood, my words, my movements. He is is the laugh lines around my eyes, the paint and the rain.

Now when I miss him, I take a drive on the highway with my hand out the window. If I open it, the wind feels just like he is holding mine. And it’s that simple really.

Dream Keeper

When I was a very small girl, still equipped with faerie wings and buoyant thoughts, I wrote myself a letter. A letter intended for my adult Self. It asked (demanded more like) for me to not forget the magic.

It said that I knew life would scare away my special world and that I must hold onto it. Even just a string.. so that I could find my way back when I had the heart for it. This was when I was about 7…so 20 years ago.

It wasn’t until a meditation I was in just recently that the gravity of that letter made its way back to the forefront of my consciousness.

Ah…

I had stopped believing in the magic. I’ll be damned. For along my walk-about through life and its obstacles, its wildfires and reckonings, I had chosen pragmatism and logic over trust and intuition. I would rather be a bit cynical and safe than unbound in my dream and thus vulnerable. For faith in something one cannot see is quite so. Similar to handing your heart away to someone you love. Its kindof yucky feeling but hell, you gotta. Yucky and strange and bold and divine.

We are here to get bigger, and to do so we must believe ourselves. WE. MUST. BELIEVE IT DAMNIT. And to carry the weight to pull this off, we must have a brave heart.

Kilt and all.

So this day I began my journey back to where I began. To the beautiful world I once believed in..the one that sang to me just as I sang to it. A place with an essence like your favorite book. A place where just beyond the treeline there could be kingdoms, and just beyond the clouds dragons. A place where my feet floated just a bit. I began, with my pragmatism and logic stomping their feet, to follow that thin string back home.

‘Dream Keeper’ is what I painted during this journey.

She is a Keeper of this dream.

Maybe even a guide back to it. Sending reminders to you that it does exist in the form of white feathers on the sidewalk and synchronicities.

For we all have this dream, cradled by our spirit and kept breathing as our heart beats. It very well will never be seen by anyone but us…and that at times nearly breaks my heart. But the true heartbreak is when your dream is unseen by even you.

Now then.

Let us follow the string back home.