Feelin' chatty I guess:))

At work today I attempted to make a new recipe called Hungarian Shortbread.

This particular recipe claims that it is the easiest, butter-iest perfectest shortbread because it combines - in my eyes also - beauty and practicality. Easy shortbread? Surely you jest. But lo, silly me. The shortbread is exactly what the recipe promised.

However.

I did not read the first part of this recipe which concerned the making of a jam filling for the shortbread. I presumed I would just smear some of our house blackberry jam between the layers (before today I had never actually tasted our jam) and this would at minimum tell me if the recipe was worth making twice.

And.

I put about 3 cups worth of filling into the shortbread when the recipe in fact called for 3/4 of a cup of jam.

Oops.

But do not fret, my pet:
When I realized my mistake I knew I had to sink or swim - this had to get served tonight! I set it all up; everything looked and tasted right. But you just never know how somethings are going to keep through the night.

So I took two pieces home like gerbils in a shoebox that I would eat later.

Mwa ha ha haaa haaaa!! I made Hungarian Shortbread totally wrong, but it's so good to eat!

Ha! Ha! Ha!!!

ImprovEverywhere

It's time for that big ol' party!!!

* * *
When:
Saturday January 16th
8-ish 'til whenever-ish
Where:
My apartamente
* * *
pPLEASE bring some
music that you like
'cuz i need to boogie down
wich'ya'll!

i am not technologically advanced at this time; assume that burned cd's may not play at my house;)

With Crowded Thoughts Of The Tree Of Life

There's been some crazy big love stuff happening in my version of this world. I've been meaning to post since early last month when the seed for many of these thoughts was planted during a simple ritual called decorating the Christmas tree in which I participated unknowingly on my grandmothers birthday. (I tend to lose track of most birthdays.)

Having come to the tail end of a year that a friend refers to as the most-magical-mind- alteringly-wonderful-birthday-year-ever, my mind has been overrun with thoughts about my family, my desire to open a business, my health, the health of family and friends, the health of this earth, my love of artmaking, the work of relationships, the ease of relationships...

I've been asking myself all year what I want to do with my life; I thought the least of my interests lay in Belvidere with my family but this last trip home for Christmas clued me in to the depth and breadth of my desire.

I want to go home.

Many years ago on a drive from Iowa City, IA to Morris, MN my lover and I stopped to refuel and stretch our legs. The Midwestern plains of winter had definitely entered a state of grace, sparkling in the headlights they burned brightly in my eyes and the hum of the road lifted me even as I stood still. I looked at AB across the roof of my car and said that I wanted to go home. "Where is that?" she asked. I bowed my head, "I don't know," was all I could say.

Somehow my notions about friendship, family, worthiness, happiness, value and purpose are all wrapped into my hopes for a home.

I believe it's less about an actual place than about my state of mind and an ability to live my life as only I can, but the way home can be so curiously varied.

The Prayer Tree by Micheal Leunig

Introduction

A person kneels to contemplate a tree and to
reflect upon the troubles and joys of life.

It is difficult to accept that life is difficult; that
love is not easy and that doubt and struggle,
suffering and failure, are inevitable for each
and every one of us.

We seek life's ease. We yearn for joy and
release, for flowers and the sun. And although
we may find these in abundance we also find
ourselves lying awake at night possessed by the
terrible fear that life is impossible. Sometimes
when we least expect it we wake up overwhelmed by a massive sense of loneliness,
misery, chaos and death: appalled by the
agony and futility of existence.

It is difficult indeed to accept that this
darkness belongs naturally and importantly to
our human condition and that we must live
with it and bear it. It seems so unbearable.

Nature, however, requires that we have the
darkness of our painful feelings and that we
respect it and make a bold place for it in our
lives. Without its recognition and acceptance
there can be no true sense of life's great depth,
wherein lies our capacity to love, to create and
to make meaning.

Nature requires that we form a relationship
between our joy and our despair, that they not
remain divided or hidden from one another.
For these are the feelings which must cross
pollinate and inform each other in order that
the soul be enlivened and strong. It is the soul,
after all, which bears the burden of our
experience. It is the soul through which we
love and it is the soul which senses most
faithfully our function within the integrity of
the natural world.

Nature requires that we be soulful and
therefore requires a dimension within us
where darkness and light may meet and know
each other. Mornings and evenings somewhere
inside, with similar qualities to the mornings
and the evenings of the earth. Qualities of
gradual but vast change; of stillness and
tender transference, fading and emerging,
foreboding and revelation.

Mornings and evenings: the traditional times
for prayer and the singing of birds, times of
graceful light whereby the heart may envisage
its poetry and describe for us what it sees.

But how do we find the mornings and evenings
within? How do we establish and behold them
and be affected by their gentle atmospheres and
small miracles? How do we enter this healing
twilight?

The matter requires our imagination.
In particular, it requires the aspect of
imagination that we have to come to know as prayer.

We pray. We imagine our way inwards and
downwards and there, with heartfelt thoughts
or words we declare our fears and our
yearnings; we call out for love and forgiveness;
we proclaim our responsibility and gratitude.
The struggling, grounded soul speaks to the
higher spirit and thus we exist in the mornings
and the evenings of the heart: thus we are
affected and changed by the qualities we have
created within ourselves.

Might not prayer then be our most accessible
means to inner reconciliation; a natural
healing function in response to the pain of the
divided self and the divided world? Might not
prayerfulness (is this really a word?) be part of
our survival instinct belonging more to the
wilderness than to the church.

And just as we have become somewhat
alienated from nature and its cycles, could it
be that we are also estranged from our
instinctive capacity for prayer and need to
understand it afresh from the example of the
natural world?

A person contemplates a tree.


The tree sends its roots beneath the surface,
seeking nourishment in the dark soil: the rich
"broken down" matter of life.

As they reach down and search, the roots hold
the tree firmly to the earth.

Thus held and nourished, the tree grows
upwards into the light, drinking the sun and
air and expressing its truth: its branches and
foliage, its flowers and fruit. Life swarms
around and into it. Birds and insects teem
within its embrace, carrying pollen and seed.
They nest and breed and sing and buzz.
They glorify the creation.

The tree changes as it grows. It is torn by
wind and lightning, scarred by frost and fire.
Branches die and new ones emerge. The
drama of existence has its way with the tree
but still it grows; still its roots reach down into
the darkness; still its branches flow with sap
and reach upward and outward into the world.

A person kneels to contemplate a tree and to
reflect upon the troubles and joys of life. The
person imagines mornings and evenings in a
great forrest of prayers, swarming and teeming
with life.

The person is learning how to pray.




I will be posting some of the chapters from The Prayer Tree in the days to come, many of them are only five or six lines.

I first encountered this little book about ten years ago: I was aiming to catch the #23 southbound for my apartment in Standish when I saw it/when it saw me from a shelf just inside the door of Mager's and Quinn in Uptown. The reading of this book fit neatly between the start and the end of my bus ride. I was enraptured.

While I was reading, a man got on the bus (drunk? ill?) and sat right next to me.

The irony of what I was reading and this very strange-to-me man talking about being my friend was not lost. I think it was this moment I when I chose to engage with strangers at bus stops.


I hope we enjoy what we find here; your thoughts are welcome:)



The illustration was found at Paul Bellamy.

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