We learn to hide the pain. We feel unacceptable. We learn to present happy faces, calm demeanors, soft voices — where what we really feel like doing is screaming until our throats rip apart. Be kind. That’s what comes to mind when I see people getting down on folks who write about being depressed and […]
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Tag: Spirit
JAM the LOW FREQUENCIES with the HIGHEST ...
How we can drum in a new era of joy, peace, beauty, and love. I guess I’m still an old hippie at heart. I look at what’s going down in the world right now, and remember the 60s, and how the world looked upside down and crazy, then, too. Out of that ‘bad’ time, men’s […]
TAKE BACK YOUR POWER!
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of people telling me what I ‘should’ buy or ‘should’ do. Use the Law of Attraction! Do this technique! You should eat green! You should stop eating sugar! Use this technique to get more clients! You should…you should…you should! NO! I shouldn’t! And I won’t, […]
YOU’RE AN AUTHOR. OR NOT.
You wouldn’t have gotten the idea to do what you do, and then the idea to share it with others, and you wouldn’t have been asked to write a book if no one cared, if the Universe hadn’t conspired to get all those people to say to you ‘you should write a book on that!’ […]
WHY WOMEN ARTISTS FAIL(ed)
I had deeply internalized all those negative, destructive messages and made them into my own beliefs that >I< was a failure, that >I< was the one to blame, and that >I< would ‘never make it’ – I attended an intense marketing workshop for women artists a while back. It made me cry. It put me […]
DIZZY ON MY FEET
On a larger scale, there were a couple times I’d simply not be driving anymore. The first time that happened, I about lost it. How did I get home, sitting at my kitchen table… There are times in my life when my entire mental/emotional/physical system goes on dizzy-mode. It started in the early 90s when […]
DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
It’s so easy to offer glib platitudinous directions! What makes it OK for one person to tell another what to do, be or have? I think we ought to just shut the heck up and stop telling people what to do. Have you noticed how business coaches, spiritual teachers, gurus and guides, coaches and trainers […]
WASABI
You know those moments where an absolutely exquisite moment of silence descends upon a space before everything erupts into chaos all around you? It was 1966. I was 21. I was new to California culture, having lived back East up until then. I had come to stay with my aunt and uncle in San Francisco […]
HOW SAYING “I FORGIVE YOU” SAVED HER LIFE
Sitting like a little kid, with her legs straight out in front of her, she was shock-white, with glazed- eyes seeing nothing. The webbing between her left hand first finger and thumb … My mother and I got into a huge argument during my senior-year spring break. We disagreed so vehemently that after three days, […]
SHY ARTIST DEAD TOO SOON
One day about a month before she left the planet, she turned to me with such a galvanizing look that I felt my feet suddenly get cemented to the floor. If I’d wanted to pay attention to anything else, I could not have. I’ve always said I’d be a psychologist if I hadn’t trained to […]
‘I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS!’
The secrets every last one of the characters carries are all starting to dribble out, with horrifying consequences. Everyone’s true nature is being revealed. I’ve been watching a fairly new show on Amazon called POWER. You have to know that I don’t watch TV. Not EVER. So it’s pretty near miraculous that I even heard […]
The PAINFUL WAY I LEARNED ABOUT MONEY, Pa...
I guarantee you that if you do not, they will hang around and expect you to do and pay for everything for them — just like you have their whole lives! Because my parents were so tight-lipped about money, I had no idea the sacrifices they made for all of us. No. Idea. My three […]
THINK, FEEL, TAKE ACTION, ASSESS, REPEAT
Despite feeling so insulted and so enraged, and so helpless to do anything about what had happened, I also knew I had to, could, and absolutely would, change How Things Were. After I got home from my sailing-across-the-Pacific journey, I spent a good amount of time cogitating about what I wanted next in my life. […]
TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK
I’m not one to fill the space with a lot of talk or jabber — I’m really happy just sitting with someone in a companionable silence — there is something sublime and sweet about just BEing with someone you love. I have a dear friend here who is the most amazing talker.
LEARNING to READ the ENERGY
There was one point where I felt funny, and I looked over to see his face flash this weird face-video of emotions. I couldn’t read it, it went so fast. But I felt alarmed…. Right after George W. Bush the very junior got elected, I left the USA. Bush’s idiocy during and after the event […]
ELIGHTABETH, So Serioth
Granny made it very clear that she was disowning me because she thought I was a ‘sex maniac.’ Those were her exact words, conveyed with a contorted look of appropriate horror by my father. When I was a little kid, my dad’s mother would come stay with us. Granny. The one whose middle name, Treat, […]
HOW MY DOG FOUND ME AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND
…his voice was deep, gravelly. For some odd reason, I felt like I could totally trust him, so I told him I was just back in town, 54, no place to live, sleeping in my car, yadda yadda. Him nodding, listening, focused, kind. September of 1999 was stifling hot. I had just returned to Santa […]
HOW BURT BECAME MY VERY BEST FRIEND
Burt is the kind of friend everyone should have. He holds little babies as if they were the gods’ own precious lights; plays with the toddlers; treats little girls and boys to merry-go-rounds, lots of colorfully illustrated books, pencils, and art supplies; Tonka trucks, small-hand size tools and paints, encyclopedias, roller skates and skis; and […]
The POWER of A PINCH and A TWIST
On a sunny late afternoon in NYC, I was on my way home from art school. Exhausted. We’d had a full day at the easel, standing on concrete floors, the instructors particularly nasty all day. As if our not knowing what they were talking about was our fault, somehow, and they were taking it out […]
THE REAL POWER
Last night, I happened upon a new show on Amazon prime called The Power. In it, young girls are discovering they have a new, odd sensation in their bodies — little courses of electricity that travel down their arms and make zippy jumping lines of lightning, that jump finger tip to finger tip. Sparks ignite upon anger […]
ROSIE PEARL
When I was in my twenties, I lived with my then-hubby and our two small boys, way out in the country in northern California. One day as we were driving home from a trip to Eureka selling our pots, I spotted a really sad looking horse in a pasture by the side of the road. […]
STONE CARVER, Part 6
Our first day! On a hot day in June, 1989, our carving group, comprised of five students all from the US, stood poised before the hunks of stone we’d selected, waiting for us on our sturdy, well-worn, waist-high carving tables. They had been set up for us in a well-shaded summer courtyard outside of a […]
STONE CARVER, Part V
Just by looking at people’s feet, I could always pretty much dependably tell who was American and who was European (or other nationality) before I even met them. Whereas we bumpkin Yanks almost always wore some brand of tennis shoes, flip-flops, or sneakers, Europeans mostly wore fine leather shoes or leather sandals (with socks!). But […]
STONE CARVER, Part IV
Upon buying my tickets to go carve marble in Italy, I also bought a language system called Sybervision so I could study Italian. It was the easiest language system I’ve ever used. By the time I landed in Rome, I could ask where’s the city center, what street is my hotel on, where to eat, […]
STONE CARVER, Part III
I loved hanging out with the master carvers. They were there from before-god-gets-up early until 5pm, when they promptly took off their newspaper hats and scuttled home. They were incredibly skilled, and so fast! They spent most of their time carving replicas of famous works, like the David, and on enormous commissioned pieces and public […]
STONE CARVER, Part II
The Quarry In 1989, I was thrilled to be invited to go carve marble in a weeks-long workshop in Lucca, Italy, under the instruction of a bona fide marble-carving maestro, Professore Roberto Bertola. I was excited because up until that point, I had only carved the softer stones like soapstone and softer varieties of alabaster. […]
GIVE IT UP!
Since my parents took me sailing almost before I could walk, being able to sail is like being able to breathe. It’s more than second nature — maybe more like a second set of senses. I can tell right away if someone is a sailor — there’s just something about them — the way they […]
MAKE ART, NOT WORRY!
I was stunned when the first lockdown was announced. Like most, my first thought was, “I can’t go OUT?” But then I realized – I hardly go out anyway! I’m an old fart, so I don’t walk well, and I’m deaf as a post with failing hearing aids, so interactions are difficult to start with. […]
PRACTICING PEACE
Many years ago in the mid-80s when I lived in Honolulu, I had a psychic reading with a gal named Alice Anne, who was well-known and very popular. At the time, I had a fairly large house with a living room that had enough space to seat 20 or so people. I hosted classes and […]
THE ANCIENTS
When T and I moved into the little one-BR house on Maui near the beach, no one thought to mention it had been built over an ancient Hawaiian burial ground. It had been covered up in the late 1800s to make room for a white-man’s housing development, rows of little plantation houses for the cane-field […]