Monday, December 30, 2013

Home is wherever I'm with you

My 2013 can be summed up in two words: movement & home. Looking back I suppose it's fitting I began the year at the Thompson hotel beside a friend who didn't want to spend the holiday alone. I felt out of place nearly the entire time but also felt I was "doing my duty" as a liminal being and providing companionship in one of his darkest hours. The hotel was his temporary home and I myself am on my 9th temporary home as this year comes to a close.

This year I faced the remainder of a transit that literally hit home as Pluto straddled my IC, my roots. A few months back a friend commented that while it may seem I was free spirited to others traveling and moving so much, he knew why I was really moving. I don't know if he truly knew as he never spelled it out but I do. Though I wouldn't say I allow astrology to completely rule my life, I do make note of, utilize and attempt to flow with energetic transits rather than exist unaware and (possibly) fight them as knowing what you're up against is half the battle. I had to move. I had to explore. I had to meander my way through various homes so I could observe and learn what this concept of home is really about and then proceed to allow my perception of it to be transformed.

11 months ago I moved into my 3rd NY apartment and over the course of the next 8 months learned what kind of home I was capable of creating from raw, bare space. I had this opportunity with my first place in Brooklyn but chose to leave it pretty empty utilizing it mostly as a studio space, which was nice but it always lacked that warm feeling I believe a home should elicit. In contrast, living on St. Marks, I invested. I entered the lease knowing it would be temporary as I didn't plan on staying but putting the effort, energy and money into creating a space that felt beautiful and comfortable and homey was something I had to do for myself. Even with the looming feeling that I'd be moving soon I bought new artwork and hung it on the walls 2 months before packing everything into boxes. The details were all very necessary.

If what they say is true, that home is where the heart is, where is home when pieces of ones heart are scattered across the globe? While I feel extremely blessed that I can feel at home in various spaces and places in this grand world, this year I learned how to create and decorate my own space, rather than just feeling at home (or not) in others spaces. Back at point zero, I am beginning this new year without a space to call my own. The void is a beautiful place if you can stand the uncertainty. Existing without any ties to a place, nor person I am free. The rubble has all been washed away. This year I can begin to build a more suitable foundation for my life, conscious of what I want home to feel like and free to create it as I please.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Hindsight is a motherfucker

As I stood there talking to my old friend, he jabbered on and on about Oscar Wilde. I had forgotten about him. I don't often forget people but somehow the hours we spent together each Sunday disappeared until last night. He had bared his soul to me and I to him yet at the time I hadn't realized that was what was happening. I mistook it all for banter and conversation to fill the dull moments. Months before moving to New York he lent me a book. Intrigued by the concept, I attempted to read it and felt like I was losing my mind. I wasn't ready for it. I remember making sure to return his book on my last day as I never planned on returning and never thought I'd see him again.

Never say never. He was 1 of 6 that came to visit me in NY. Which I had also forgotten until I saw him. I poured my broken heart out over Smac in the East Village. He was the first friend from back home I was able to vent to about everything that had happened. He knew (and kept) my secrets when no one else from here did.

I wasn't ready to read that book when he lent it to me. And yet, months later I was introduced to music from the same seed the book bloomed from and fell head over heels in love with both the sound and the source. 2 sides of the same coin. The ways in which She had been whispering and tugging and pulling my heart strings towards the space I need to be in long before I even realized it existed continue to reveal themselves. While one can philosophize and say there are no "wrong" choices, I've learned that I must choose my heart. Every. Single. Time.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Sssssssss

There was a snake slithering through my subconscious this morning. He wasn't in my dreams, at least not in snake form but when I woke, his forked tongue tickled my ear and scaly presence demanded my attention. Last night my mom suggested I see if I could work at my old job. It wasn't even consideration as I firmly didn't want to move backwards, yet I suppose in having that mentality I placed limitations on myself. Not long after waking up I got a text from my friend inviting me to the Christmas party at my old job. While I don't know at this point if I'll work there again, (if they have shifts available), it's now become an option in my head.

Ouroboros, (which auto correct just amusingly and appropriately changed to "our orbits"), the snake that eats it's tail seems to have invaded my brain. As much time traveling as I've been doing down memory lane I should have known I'd bump into him sometime soon being that I'm literally back at zero. A few months ago I titled an entry "gestation" as it was the only word to appropriately describe how I felt. Traveling from NY to the southwest and LA, I recounted to my (Mexican) friends and their families (as they fed me) that my mom ate mostly Mexican food while she was pregnant with me. I don't know my due date, but by the appearance of everything I'm pretty certain it's approaching.

1,000

I oh ohh Ohhh
Oh. The void. The blackest night.
The darkest wife.
She is,
Eternity.

The stars, they sit upon each hip.
The stars, they beg to be sipped.
The stars, they want their worlds flipped.

I oh ohh Ohhh
A left eye blink and all one can think
Is when those lids will open again.
When they might regain their sight
And gaze once more into her light...
In this space exists their flight.

I oh ohh Ohhh
Secrets stored within her smirk
And booming, golden laughter lurks
Just around the corner.
"Will you come play with me?" She asks.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

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.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The key to seeing is believing

My hair was curly when I woke up this morning. Maybe not ringlet curly, but certainly wavy and wild, holding some semblance of electricity lending a feeling that something was different. I've been sleeping on my back. It's not my favorite position to sleep in but it's the most comfortable I can get for now and regardless every morning since I've moved I have woken up to find my bangs bent in some way as though I've been sleeping directly on them. Today though all my bangs were in place, I woke to a wild mane.

A few years ago I was on my way back home to Brooklyn from a friends house. I had been in between jobs and scrambling to try and make ends meet, pleading with the universe to in some way, somehow help me. While at her house, in the midst of my frustrated "What am I going to do?" meltdown, a bar regular who we both knew texted my friend asking for my information because he wanted to hire me for makeup on a girl group he was recording with. Problem (temporarily) solved. So I'm on my way home and the man sitting next to me got up at one of the stops. Out of the corner of my eye I see a tangled something dressed in that yellow/green glow in the dark kind of color that had revealed itself when the man got up. Ever curious, I picked it up, untangled it and it quickly took its proper form, a star. It was one of those shape bracelets that were popular a few years back. In that moment I felt like Mario and began to laugh. I had found an invincibility star while on the Path! (I was riding the Path train from NJ-NY)


Fast forward 7 months to October 2011

Prospect Park. One of the reasons I loved my first Brooklyn apartment was purely because of its proximity to this emerald. I can't explain my draw to it but this park has pulled me into it since I first visited Brooklyn, before ever moving. One fall afternoon a friend and I were wandering through per usual and the day was already demonstrating itself to be of the wonder filled variety. A rainbow orb, which I had never seen before nor since embraced the sky above us. The sun was not at its center. It was solely a perfect ring of color. A few minutes after noticing the prism in the sky, I saw tiny mushroom "steps" that had grown near the base of a tree. I remember feeling like I was floating, my heart full of wonder and gratitude for the beauty that kept presenting itself to me. As I can easily get carried away floating, I sat at the roots of the tree feeding it water in exchange for providing me with a seat and some grounding. I took the scene in front of me in and conversed a bit with the wind. At some point while looking around, my eyes wandered to my feet and the awe took over. Directly beneath where I sat were a set of keys. Partially buried in the dirt and covered with leaves and grass, they had been there for some time. Only 3 of the 5 were above ground. While the average person might adopt a thought pattern of "Big deal. Someone sat there before and lost their keys.", my own thought pattern and sight had evolved at this point to "What are the odds that in this giant park filled with hundreds, maybe thousands (I don't know), of trees, directly after seeing a rainbow ring in the sky, I sat at this exact spot and found these keys. While some of them were kind of average looking keys, there were two that looked so old and beautiful and I wondered what they all opened. Though I had found other objects since the star, these keys, much like finding the star made me feel as though I were in a real live video game. From that day onward, life began to feel like a scavenger hunt. Each time I found a key,(I found 14 in NY, 1 in Hawaii) I adopted the idea that life was opening some kind of door for me. I was unlocking some part of myself that had been hidden away. I found one before working a very important NYFW show. I found another literally in the middle of a jungle in Hawaii. The last I found in a dark alley while a just eclipsed full moon rose in LA. Until today.


With wide eyes and wild hair for whatever reason I woke up fully energized early this morning. I fed the cats and Scrappy seemed anxious to pee. He's not generally a morning dog and has to be coaxed to go outside but this morning he paced at my side ready to go. As I put his collar and leash on, my Dad tried to insist he'd take him but I shut him down. "He likes to go to the corner where..." and I cut him off saying I always let dogs walk me, that he would take me wherever he wanted to go, it was fine. We walked to the same place he generally goes to and rather than head for the large patch of grass to handle his business he stopped and sat. Looking down, there they were nestled in the dirt. 4 old keys. One coated in rust, all different sizes and types bound together by a rusty old wire. I don't know what they open, I don't care how they got there. I found them, they're mine now and I can't wait to see what they unlock.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Quality of power

It is simultaneously both terrifying and endlessly amusing just how much power a single person can hold.

My day yesterday was dreary and sleep filled. Playing catch up with everyone I hadn't seen in years drained me. Alcohol consumption, which happens once in a blue moon these days, didn't help my cause any. While talking to my ex for a few minutes before she dropped me off, my speech became less than it should be. I began to say "leaved" rather than "left" and caught myself. We had just been talking about how she's happy that I'm going back to school and I shouldn't be wasting my intelligence. So when I made that mistake in speech, my brain nearly reverted back to thinking "WTF? I thought I was done with this inarticulate, grammatically incorrect chemo infested bullshit." But she looked at me (after laughing of course), and said "See why I limit who I hang out with and how often? You absorb people easily like me." A fact which I've been very well aware of for the past few years but to hear her say it- something she never voiced in the 4 years we spent together, was kind of amazing. I had a giant *phew* moment and realized that with all the alcohol consumption I had let my bubble down and absorbed my surroundings. A moment of sadness followed as the people I was surrounded by have giant, kind hearts. But if I'm 100% honest, energetically we don't vibe as well as we used to anymore. So while I need not write them off completely, our interactions will need to stay minimal if I wish to continue refining my energy field and operate at full capacity.

Today also began dreary. It's been colder than I became accustomed to after an east coast summer and SoCal fall. The sky was overcast and for the life of me I couldn't find my thumb drive to send and print resumes. In tearing apart my belongings that have yet to be put away, an envelope fell out of The Alchemist. It instantly made me smile and so I expressed myself accordingly to the sender. I then took Scrappy out into the backyard to pee. As my phone vibrated notifying me of the responding text, the clouds literally parted. The sun peeked and then flooded my face. A Robin came and sat in my tree singing his song, showing off his beautiful red breast. The power of people...

Monday, December 2, 2013

I contact

Last night I celebrated the birthday of someone I've known since I was 10. Her actual birthday isn't until Saturday but as I was already up and moving around the city, I went with the flow and accepted the invitation. I wondered who aside from my parents I'd actually see first upon moving back. I didn't think it would be my ex but I guess that's how she wanted it to play out. Walking up the stairs to my old job, though it of course felt familiar, also felt like I was time traveling and had been away for centuries. My attendance had been kept a secret so when I showed my face, the reactions were interesting. My sobriety versus everyone's inebriation and having been gone for so long colored my sight in a hue that had grown in saturation. I felt a sense of sadness at how little appeared to have changed. Yet, there were new dynamics to appreciate and familiar eyes to get found in.

The last year in NY I existed mainly as a hermit. People drained me. The job I had left me stressed, anxiety ridden and exhausted. I spoke with very few people and gave even less my eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul and quite frankly I was too drained to share any more of my soul with anyone never mind desire to take anyone else's in. Last night I realized that it's only really been in the last month that I've engaged in any kind of serious eye contact. Upon visiting my best friend, my eyes felt like they could finally breathe again. He told me my eyes brought him a sense of calm. Which was nice to hear and relieved me after not giving it up for such a long period of time. As a scorpion, eye contact is everything to me. A persons eyes reveal their heart and I had somewhat starved myself.

I don't know why I didn't consider that she would be there last night, but she was. The first person I dated upon re-entering the world after my illness. At the bar she pounced upon seeing me, lifting me off my feet and swinging me around babbling about NY and how long was I in town etc etc. We had an immediate bond when we initially met and went through a few years of awkwardness after our intimacy ceased. I don't remember when that finally healed itself but I had forgotten just how strong our bond was.

The party group moved to my friends house and so we all had a somewhat more quiet environment to hang out in. By this point I had a drink in my system and being a lightweight don't recall how the conversation began, nor a lot of what it was about but what astounded me and sat with me long after was the near uninterrupted direct eye contact that happened throughout the course of our exchange. This doesn't exist with everyone I interact with even when I am feeling up to sharing my soul. Not everyone can handle the intensity so when I find those who can, there's this deep, calm yet exciting warmth that seems to creep through me. There's a recognition that occurs, something clicks and the only words that seem to echo are "I know" as both pairs of eyes smile and beam at each other. It's really more of "I" contact when this happens. Recognizing yourself in another.


Sunday, December 1, 2013

Sensory Snacks

This morning the clover called me outside. Bejeweled with a mixture of sun and dew, our yard took on a rainbow hue. 2 doves sat nestled in the tree as a teeny hummingbird came to greet me.

Today was more of a visual aural kind of trip down memory lane with both the past and present colliding. Possibly the future as well, though I don't like to predict those kinds of things. An old partner in crime whom I haven't seen nor really heard from since my sophmore year of high school added me on Facebook. I "ran away" to his house when I was 14. That wasn't my initial intention but it kinda sorta happened momentarily. Long story not worth jotting down but needless to say my brain flooded with the hours we all spent together before and after school being bad asses. As life would have it, hours after our initial contact, I accompanied my mom to get her hair cut. The salon is in a neighborhood I spent 4 years trotting through each day after school with said being along with others. So as I waited, I walked around to explore this blooming neighborhood that once was pretty desolate. My soul was soothed with the random street art I saw as it's been a bit starved since leaving Brooklyn. After just writing about flight, the first piece I stumbled upon was none other than Ms. Amelia Earhart.



After my jaunt I sat down with my coffee beneath a tree outside Cafe La Vie, amused at the name per usual. Ravens joined me singing their song and the breeze that came my way was filled with scents of a sacred plant. After her hair was cut, we walked to a small park where I watched a little girl in a purple tutu play beneath a beautiful art installation from Burning Man called Future's Past.



We walked and walked and walked some more. My mom is used to driving but her car broke down so it was back to basics and my own favorite. The sun was warm and I began to sweat, layered in clothes forgetting how each neighborhood here has its own climate. So much has changed since I've been away and today was quite beautiful rediscovering the city I was born in. She's blooming.