I am a (silly) dyke with whiskers!

photos by Katy Gerdes

Sharing The Love - It's The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Givin' Up Some Sweet, Sweet Lovin' For My Hometown of Chicago & A Fond Bon Voyage To Stosh!!

Today is the day that a good friend leaves for London.
So I offer now what I did not last night.
A Toast:
I wish you all the best in your adventures;
happy travels in as many ways as possible.
Prost!!

It all starts with a glance... Part 2

While driving with my mother through town
I did happen to glance absently at the windows of a building, a beautiful building in Belvidere. What I there did see was a possibility,
a beautiful and engaging possibility.

I'm officially, seriously serious about opening my own business. I feel as though the myriad threads of my life are about to come together into a Big Beautiful E: E for everything! E for ecstacy! E for embrace!

It all starts with a glance... Part 1

Aphrodite

The one with the stone cups

and the stone face, and the grinding
stone settled
between her knees, the one with stone

in her bosom, with stones
in her kidneys, a heart of pure
stone, the one with the stony lips, the one

with the thighs of marble, with petrified
genitals, the one whose glance
turns to stone

this idol, stones
through her ears, stones round her neck, her
wrists, round her fingers, a stone

in her navel, stones in her shoes, this
woman so like a stone
statue, herself

a stone, stands
in the stone square, midway
between the stone-high steeple, the stone-

round well, a stone
in her stone-still hand, and a stony will
waiting

for what will land, stiff
as a long stone, on the grinding
stone, on

her lap.


From Rave Poems 1975-1999 by Olga Broumas

there is night and day brother, both sweet things; sun moon and stars brother, all sweet things.

What I'm Learning: Against A Backdrop Of Beige Curtains

For JayBee

I've been thinking about our art night gathering. I am looking forward to the relief of expression that comes with your companionship. I've been thinking about stories I want to tell; draw out. I kind of feel like I'm getting to know myself again, remembering ideas that I've had and never followed through with. This is fantastic!

I've learned/am learning that I like to approach a drawing with an idea or story or feeling in mind, something I want to convey because it has intrinsic value. I've learned that an insecurity I've felt as an artist, until now, is that I have nothing to say in my work, let alone anything interesting. (Where did I learn to judge my ideas/myself so severely? ) I am learning that the dialogue in my head is interesting, if only to me and very much worth pursuing. I feel like a conscious co-creator with Chaos and Joy. It's beautiful to think like this, see this, us, earth.

Just a few months ago I'd have told you that this passage struck the heart of me to pieces because it reflected my own intimate thoughts so clearly; I had grown to resent and avoid my sketchbooks and journals...

At first the passage of time, marked clearly by each recorded date, gave her half-conscious pleasure, but time in a book can pass through many days in an hour and still drag at the spirit as heavily and specifically as its own confining skeleton. There is no freedom in a journal. It is an accurate record of the prisoner. Even his greatest fantasies are only fantasies of a man trapped in time. A year had passed when Evelyn set down the book, but it was someone else's year. She had not turned on the lamp of her own evening. - Jane Rule, Desert Of The Heart

Now I can tell you this:

"... of a meadow that seems as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked. I feel as if I might walk on forever, without coming to the end of it." -Kate Chopin, The Awakening

"She began to look with her own eyes: to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to 'feed upon opinion' when her own soul had invited her." -Kate Chopin, The Awakening


I am reacquainting myself with how to listen and observe, to engage the way I did when I made/had the time to see, i.e. when I was in art school nearly ten years ago, and my 'job' was to look and seek and learn to tell the stories, to engage with and be educated by as much as I am able, with the drama of the garden around me.

Good God this is fun!

ps
I am in love with the curtains in my bedroom. For six years I have almost totally loved my bedroom windows... but now that they are curtained in shiny coffee-with-cream and white colored floor length panels I am 100% in love, love, love. I am a textile whore, oh yeah!



*the honeybee image is from a Victoria&Albert Museum postcard set
*the blue text postcard is made by Calavaria of Portland

...para El Dia de los Muertos

Willing To Fight by Ani Difranco
The windows of my soul
are made of one way glass
don't bother looking into my eyes
if there's something you want to know,
just ask
I got a dead bolt stroll
where I'm going is clear
I won't wait for you to wonder
I'll just tell you why I'm here

'cause I know the biggest crime
is just to throw up your hands
say
this has nothing to do with me
I just want to live as comfortably as I can
you got to look outside your eyes
you got to think outside your brain
you got to walk outside you life
to where the neighborhood changes

tell me who is your boogieman
that's who I will be
you don't have to like me for who I am
but we'll see what you're made of
by what you make of me
I think that it's absurd
that you think I
am the derelict daughter
I fight fire with words
words are hotter than flames
words are wetter than water

I got friends all over this country
I got friends in other countries too
I got friends I haven't met yet
I got friends I never knew
I got lovers whose eyes
I've only seen at a glance
I got strangers for great grandchildren
I got strangers for ancestors

I was a long time coming
I'll be a long time gone
you've got your whole life to do something
and that's not very long
so why don't you give me a call
when you're willing to fight
for what you think is real
for what you think is right

*

MusicMatterFaithless

*

MoltenLightChadVanGaalen

*

I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides,
I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace.
I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you
and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.
Namaste,
Ram Dass

The Shiny 25cent Piece and Helen Keller

I'm not sure if any living soul knows this about me but Helen Keller is incredibly dear to me. She is one of the people I have felt drawn to since childhood; she inspires me, moves me, ignites me. When the quarter bearing her image was released in '03 I began to keep one of these coins in my art materials box as a token of endurance and persistence and commitment to finding my own way through... (as a side note, when I draw I often "paint myself into a corner" and I'm always looking for the way out of it in my work:))

That being said... I was done working today quite early, it was like having another day off after a wonderful Samhain weekend. It's been a beautiful, sunny and windy day and whoa nelly am I glad I was not buried in the basement of Hell's Kitchen all day! Normally, to get home I catch a bus that drops me off right in front of my house but today I was on another route which meant that I had to walk five blocks to get home... half way there, lying on the sidewalk and glinting in the sunshine was a radiant new quarter; it was heads up! This quarter had my name all over it. (By the way, I love finding pennies that are tails up so that I can flip them over for the next passerby as a way of spreading a little luck and funny joy.) When I flipped it over and saw Ms. Helen Keller flashing in the light I nearly gasped. This was no small treasure for me to find but a token, an omen, a sign and an acknowledgment of the path I'm on right now.

I know it seems like small change but how often do you find a quarter on the pavement? The only other time in my life that I've found anything larger than a dime was when I was about nine years old - I found a twenty dollar bill curled up in the gutter in Chicago after my first ride on a motorcycle with my Aunt Tinkie's boyfriend, Mean Gene. What kind of Jungian metaphor is this? Ha ha ha:)

As of May 30th of this year I made a promise to myself and this coin showing up about six months into my journey seems like an extraordinary and fortuitous affirmation.

Back In The Saddle or Making Out With Santa Claus or Eating Crackers In Bed or Watching Baby Go Boom!

What the hell do you think it means that I dreamed I was mackin' on Santa?? That it's a good thing that I'm a naughty girl and I'm totally gonna get what I want for Christmas? Whatever you do, don't cross your legs 'cuz Santa's got a present for you? (I think if you listen closely you can tell that am giggling like a mad person right now!)

Perhaps you're wondering what the f**k has been happening since I said I'd be "offline for a few weeks?" Me too. You'd think that since I've been walking around in my life I'd be able to tell you a little bit about it but, ney ney Moosebreaths.

For now, I just want to let you know, the few of you who might still be passing through, that I wish you many happy feelings on your bodies! that I am loathe to see my garden dying back, that I have rearranged my living room (again!) 'cuz this time I think I might really have it;) and that I am very much looking forward to having a big ol' party soon!

ps

The photo in the blog title is one that I took on this day; the subject here is lovingly labeled Hell Box. In the printing and letterpress world we set type by hand... very tiny these pieces of type. Sometimes the type is dropped or misplaced. If you are apprenticing in a print shop one of the first tasks set to you is often to sort something like the contents of a Hell Box back into their correct cases; a 'case' is an entire set of type in one font and one size. It's really best never to drop or misplace type. Ha ha ha haa haaa hhaa!

FuhWee a.k.a. F.Y.I.

I will be temporarily offline for a few weeks. Goodbye Qwest. Hello USI!

I Offer You The Song In My Heart: A YogaPrayers Workshop

August 11, 18 & 25, 2009; 7:15 - 8:45 p.m.

Seva Yoga Studio @ Embodied Health, 2500 University Avenue West #F5, St. Paul 55114

I honor the Wheel of Heaven and the Axis of Time;
May I learn to carry what is hidden as a gift to others.
In this workshop we will explore the mystery of creating a personal set of prayer beads. We'll practice gentle yoga, breathwork and mantra as a way to clear ourselves so that we may listen to the still, small voice within us that guides our daily lives.

COST:
$50 ($16.75 per class)
Some materials provided like beading wire, pliers, thread, and some miscellaneous beads. Raid your jewelry boxes, keychains and toolboxes because you just never know what will catch your eye! If it catches your eye it probably has something to tell you, so bring it along:) Also bring a journal or a notebook and pen/pencil to write as we go.

TO REGISTER:
Visit the website and print the registration form to go with your payment, or call 651-235-8254.

www.embodied-health.com

No experience with yoga or beadwork required:)
If you'd like to read the prayer that I wrote in 2007, here it is:
prayer-for-changing-world