Shamanic Soliloquy

With each inhalation, the colors increased in saturation, expanding into waves that resembled a rainbow ocean around me. The curtains slowly parted and dots of brilliant violet light swiftly dancing around each other in no apparent order swam through darkness as an opening in a forest came into view. This meadowy riverbank was lush, astoundingly vibrant and spiced with scents that only nature is capable of providing. My eyes inhaled every shade of green I've ever seen and some hues I didn't even know existed. Purple and orange and yellow wild flowers speckled the ground and dandelion globes glowed while mountains framed the sky. My first step out of my skin was met with soft earth and warm grass. Walking beside the river, I swung my left foot into it every few yards until I just had to drink it. The clarity of the water was unparalleled to anything I've ever seen or felt or tasted before. My entire being began to crave the feeling that only my feet had experienced. I bathed in the river and made my way through the unkempt overgrowth to a giant Oak and laid on a grassy patch beneath it. Sunbeams peeked through the leaves and the breeze kissed me head to toe whispering secrets only she knows. There were no sounds to alert me, but I felt him coming.

I opened my eyes, sat up and waited. The top of his head came into view in the distance as he too walked along the river. The closer he got, the warmer I grew and as more of his being came into my view, tears began to stream down my face. The corners of my mouth jumped up and I felt my breath quicken. He beamed so brightly, so purely, so perfectly. His beauty absolutely overwhelmed me. Warmth transformed to heat which began to creep steadily, filling me head to toe. I looked down at myself to again find every single piece zipping around dancing excitedly.

He turned and made his way through the path to me and I saw his own dancing violet dots pulsating as his grin met mine. His eyes I don't feel I have the vocabulary to describe in entirety. All I can say is that they are bright and wide and warm and loving and comforting and they are home. I have lived inside them many, many times before this. He took my hand to stand me up, wrapping me inside of him the moment I had fully risen. With each breath and each beat our combined light brightened. This seemed to excite the birds as they sang and danced in the air and branches above us. The breeze returned to join the birds singing her song and the tree gently bowed, gifting his shoulder with a leaf. For hours we danced, we swam, we played and did as we always do. We loved.

He sat against the trunk of the Oak and I climbed onto his lap. Face to face, we spoke and he told me what I already knew."I'm not ready yet." I smiled. "Of course you're not. Nor am I." He smiled and we began to laugh at each other. The sun was setting painting the sky with clementine and pink. He gathered wood from beneath the tree and I gathered water from the river. Digging a shallow circle surrounding the kindling, I left enough space for us to lay down within if we wished and drenched it to keep the fire contained. With a stick in his hand touching the one in mine, we set the fire ablaze. As the sky grew darker, the fire grew warmer and we laid for hours watching the flames. The moon rose and everything seemed to awaken once again. The fire had flooded my eyes with orange and now glancing around they indulged in hues of indigo. We sat up to face each other and as I took in the newly painted surroundings he took my hand and held it open towards him. In my palm he placed a conch shell and smiled. He kissed my lips, my nose, my cheeks, each eye lid and my forehead lingering at every spot for a few seconds. His head then rested upon my chest and he fell asleep, fingers intertwined with mine. I fell into the rhythm of our breaths as I watched the moon continue her journey before surrendering to sleep as well.

Expression of Self

It was just about 2 years ago that I sat in front of the camera and froze, nearly paralyzed. The room was silent after several minutes of fussing around about lighting and the silence along with the feeling of 3 pairs of eyes focused on me ignited a bit of a panic attack. Of course my reactions are generally held within so I sat, still, glancing over at the only pair of eyes I found comfort in. The silence felt heavier as the moments passed and I just couldn't give what they all wanted. The idea behind all of this was an attempt to help me restart my youtube channel and the video clip was being shot professionally. When I recorded I was always alone. I set the camera how I wanted. I lit myself and the room how I wanted. If I fucked up in speech, I'd start over without the pressure of other people standing around waiting. It was something that was mine wholly and had a homegrown feel whereas this felt like a huge production and just felt wrong.



Growing up my mom used to joke that if I ever went missing she'd have no shortage of photos to show the police. This was before the digital age, when film reigned. As the internet was born to us common folks and community sites popped up left and right, my own digital imagery was born as well through fuzzy webcams and eventually my first digital camera. Somehow I stumbled upon Photoshop and spent hours playing creating designs, layouts, ads, flyers etc for myself and friends. Long before "selfie" was ever a word, I had no issues with photographing myself and using that image as somewhat of an art piece. I loved doing it. Where my mom, who hates to have herself photographed and will fight it at any cost throwing her hands across her face, views it as narcissism, I always used to view it as a celebration of oneself and the various ways that self can be manipulated. In fact, "selfies" were my therapy and artistic expression after chemo. Selfies were how I first learned to hone any kind of skill set with makeup and lighting.

In conversation with a friend a few weeks ago about blogging, she showed me her site, explained how her stats had slowly grown and asked me for my opinion and any advice. I told her that she was missing. She shares what she likes and other peoples creations giving people a sense of her style, but she is nowhere to be found in her blog. As I ran that end of year statigram thing for Instagram last week, I was shocked that all my "top 5" photos were of myself. Back in the days of Migente, Collegeclub, MySpace, Livejournal and even Youtube, I had no qualms about posting photos of myself yet in recent years for whatever reason I became extremely uncomfortable with who I was and only shared myself through photos on rare occasions - which though the viewer may have not known, were emotionally driven for me and I cherished for one reason or another. Though I won't begin youtube again until I have the means to produce to my standards, I must again become comfortable with myself and my presence. Which has been slowly happening in ways I never explored before thanks to a very trusted soul.

On my birthday I vowed to myself I would write every day. I haven't posted every day, but I've written. In light of rediscovering myself and regaining comfortability with my image and presence, I'm going to post a photo every day because I'm remembering that there's nothing wrong with celebrating oneself so why the hell not? Here are the last 3 days:


January 1st 4am
exhausted


January 2nd 1pm
Those days where I paint the sky as I please


January 3rd
There's certain ways the light always plays whenever you're in my world.

Santa Baby...

"You have everything you need" She said.

"But what about desire?" I asked.

"Desires are how you color your life. Desire is the amount of sugar you decide to add to your coffee, the flowers you decide to grow in your garden, the choices you make which decorate your existence. Desires are the ingredients that give birth to dreams."

Christmas is the holiday of desire. What do you want? What can jolly Saint Nick provide you with to color your world and sweeten it with? Having done the mostly black and white (and thus grey) existence toned thing, its time to flesh it out. I'm ready for some more color. I went through an old box my mom kept full of our paperwork, achievements and art projects. I found notes to my fairy godmother and the tooth fairy though none to Santa. Maybe she tossed them once the "truth" was revealed? In any case its time to make use of mercurial magic and make a list and check it twice. I've been both naughty and nice.

These are some of my desires...
1. Some way of earning income that I enjoy, can help people and flex my creative powers
2. New soles for my Leeloo boots
3. Flower friends for the tree in my parents backyard
4. A bird feeder
5. A polarizing filter for my lens
6. Him in flesh
7. Tactile dome experience
8. Travel to Europe or Africa - preferably Paris, Greece, South Africa or Egypt
9. Reiki classes
10. A grant or scholarship to cover most if not all of my tuition to finish school
11. Healing my mothers sight
12. Healing my fathers hearing
13. Oil paints and a canvas
14. Silver gel pen
15. YSL burgundy mascara
16. Higher playground for my cats
17. 3 bedroom house
18. Lots of laughter
19. Immersed in light
20. A computer
21. A new dress and somewhere worth wearing it

Where kids write letters to Santa for Christmas, this list is more to her for life with a few things thrown in intended for him. She delivered as a child when I wrote to her so I believe she'll deliver once again.

The passion of lovers is for death said she

"I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
-Oscar Wilde

One of the last books I (re)read, was The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho. The theme of the book is founded upon the notion that we tend to kill the things we love the most and explores why we commit this crime against ourselves. It tells a story of the author journeying on a road trip with his wife in an attempt to learn how to speak to his angel.

Though nearly every single book of Coelho's has resonated with some part of me at some point in my life, it was this book that caused a vibration to stir deep down inside some place of myself that I had forgotten about. I've been speaking of Venus often and in all fairness if I am to speak of her, I must also speak of him. Pluto. Hades. Whatever name you'd like to attribute to him, he is quite simply the King of the underworld. He is the Grim Reaper and tends to the seeds we plant deep down within our being. He is death. He is sex. He is rebirth. My own view of him is the paternal personification of the dark Mother. He carries his torch within her womb providing nourishment to the pieces of ourselves we may have forgotten about, shoved deep down within.

The way in which my unique energy structure came to enter this life, is with her, Venus, and him, Pluto as eternal playmates, lovers and friends. Attached at the hip, wherever Venus decides to bask in the sunshine, Pluto can be found laying in the shade of an umbrella beside her, hands intertwined, smiling as she beams. Souls within this soul of mine, they are each others mates.

I'm taken back to visions of Mya's video for "My Love is like Whoa". As someone who took tap dance for 13 years, I remember how enamored I was with her bringing a craft I held so close to my heart into mainstream society. On top of the fact that she began the video perched in a zoot suit, smoking a cigar, dressed like a dude and yet oozing with the power of her femininity. The lyrics, well, they speak for themselves. And I remember feeling like somehow she had observed my life and was writing about me. I love hard. Some may say I love too hard. But that's me, it's how I exist and I don't know how else to love. All or nothing. My love is like whoa... I've tried to temper it which does nothing but distort my actions and sentiments.

On twitter recently someone described Pluto as the dark stranger in the alley who sends chills of fear up your spine. I replied that he only manifests as such if you're not in touch with your dark side. I am an avid defender of him as he is so close to my heart. And as a Solar, Mercurial and Uranian Scorpion, (which he rules alongside Mars), he is my light, how I see, how I hear, how I speak, how I love and my vision. I see and I feel the dark side of others. Those pieces they hide away from the world and themselves. It's not always pretty and yet I always see beauty as the struggle to hide away those pieces that are bursting to come forth is such a beautifully arduous process. It's watching cells split beneath a microscope, a seed bursting open and pushing its way through the soil to eventually shoot up towards the sun.

I have found that quite a lot of people, self included, grow afraid of themselves. Why, I cannot answer. As children many of us become afraid of the dark, the monsters under our bed and skeletons in our closet. As someone who loves the dark side of others and someone who loves hard, I've often found myself in a conundrum as people push me away. I don't think I realized that I too, have done it myself over the course of the years. If we can't love ourselves wholly, including our dark side, or more potently, if we for some awful reason feel as though we don't deserve to be loved wholly, then who the hell is this other person to do so. Off with her head! And here's a dagger through the heart as well. Must kill this scary beast.

For some, I believe it's an issue of trust. That was my reason at least. Not knowing what will burst forth from the depths of the underworld can be scary and its a life long process (hopefully). When you don't really take the time to explore every shadow and get to know who you are and accept who you are, how can you trust yourself? And if you can't trust yourself wholly, you can forget about trusting someone else completely. And so the cycle continues. Who is this person? How dare they come shining their light inside my darkness! We then attempt to surround ourselves with people who are content to take us at a superficial level. People who likely wouldn't even understand our dark side if we dared to reveal it. People who quite simply don't ignite our shadows. But the universe is wise and light cannot exist without darkness. She will do as she does and whisper in our ears, send scent filled winds our way and haunt us until we somehow, someway are brought back face to face with our other side.

I'm unsure what my own body count is at exactly but I've maimed quite a few. And in all reality, none of them had to die but they were either pieces of myself that were too painful to admit existed or whom I didn't believe I deserved simply because I did not value myself wholly. As with his book, I too have finally learned how to speak with my angel and from where I stand right now, with Pluto's fingers clutching my own, no one else will die without the other aspect of death which is rebirth.

And somehow, I've stumbled upon a sketch from years ago that resurfaced directly after posting this. Life continues to amuse... :)