Still on the theme of cultivating wonder...knowing that so many really remarkable things are going on all the time; the moments go by in a flash.  I've decided to stop time in a sense by listing some of my recent ones. I want to share some of those aha-how-wonderful moments so we can all sit back and savor the amazing parts of everyday.

So, some everyday wonders from my life by the Gulf. Savor them with me.

***smelling and chewing the fresh leaves of the root beer kava plant, which evokes something unidentified that seems to be long gone by
 
***the tiny bubbles bouncing off the surface of the hot tub, dancing in the sunlight with joyous momentum

***discovering plantain growing in my yard, just when I need the leaves to soothe a bite on my leg
 
***connecting online with my we-consciousness community and feeling the deep love that has no boundaries

***the patterns beneath my feet in the parking lot, mapping the path to everywhere

***opening a “dollar bag” of quick-sale eggplants from the vegetable market to reveal a big-nosed character

 I am increasingly concerned with cultivating wonder -- with becoming aware of the everyday magic we are surrounded by in every moment, and connecting in with it.  I have been developing workshops about this topic (a pretty wonder-full activity in itself), and in order to help others catch the magic, I am learning to articulate the elements that help us cultivate that awareness and way of life.   (Do contact me if you are interested in a cultivating wonder workshop, for I welcome all opportunities to share the ideas...).  In one of his well-known poems, Lawrence Ferlinghetti said he was "waiting for a rebirth of wonder." I say: let's not wait, let's step into that way of being.

One of the first elements or principles in the cultivation is to pay close attention to what is really there. The great poet Mary Oliver (who sadly just passed away, but we are all so much richer because of what she passed on) phrased it this way:

        Instructions for living a life:
            Pay attention.
            Be astonished.
            Tell about it.

So that's what I want to do now. One of the things I have been paying attention to in recent months is the sheer abundance that exists in all aspects of the material plane. It's astonishing, and I want to tell about it. Perhaps the most familiar sense of abundance comes from looking up and considering the stars; many of us have had the experience of contemplating the vastness--but beyond contemplating it, feeling it in an embodied way. (If I just use my mind in this kind of contemplation, I get  headache; it is literally too much for my brain to take in. But I can feel it in my spirit, or allow it as a felt sense rather than an idea.) But there is vastness much closer than the heavens--even our bodies hold astonishing abundance. 

Abundance is often expressed in terms of numbers. Even though there is "an unbelievably large number" of stars in the heavens, according to science writer David Blatner, about the same number of molecules can be found "in just ten drops of water." (Really?!!!!)  Our bodies, of course, are largely made of water--about 75% in an infant, and 60%in an adult. And what if we look at other body components? An adult human has somewhere around  37 trillion cells, and ten times as many microbes. The estimate for the micro-biome is about 100 trillion cells. (Again, it's not possible for me to think about this--the headache comes on again, for the number is too big to actually understand-- but it is certainly possible to be amazed.)

There are an amazing number of sand grains, too, each one ground down from a once-solid rock, shell or mineral of much greater size. Some estimate about 5 million grains of sand in one cup (depending of course on the fineness of the sand). Expand that to a child's beach pail or sand castle, or to one small beach, and then think of all the beaches.  

But just as we have to keep looking deeper at our bodies--from the organ level to the cell level to the microbe level--we can go deeper into (or around) the sand grains, too. There is a whole world of creatures (meiofauna) that live between the wet sand grains on a beach!  How amazing is this! It's a separate, distinct microscopic universe, made up of tiny organisms about 30 to 50 micrometers (bigger than bacteria, but less than a millimeter long). I first learned about the meiofauna in Michael Welland's book, Sand: The Never-Ending Story, and it is fair to say I was totally blown away--another whole world of life I knew nothing about, another level of life on the beach.  Just think how many of these beings would be underfoot on a 3 mile walk along the beach! Just think how many would be under a single footstep!
This drawing is what first captured my imagination.

This wasn't meant to be a science lesson, but I get so very excited about what is literally filling our world that I just want to keep putting out the amazing facts. Abundance everywhere. In our bodies, in our environments, often invisible, but our sight is expanding! With the wonderful tools we have available now (powerful microscopes, telescopes, space probes, data pattern generation etc.) we can literally see much what we have never seen before. 


Let me share something else I discovered in my environment recently that has brought me into a state of wonder. This was not literally hidden or invisible, but it was so well camouflaged that it might as well have been--that is, it was hidden until I started paying close attention. Last month I was wandering among some scrappy dunes near the (southwest Florida) intercoastal waterway, in a place where waste was once dumped after the bay was dredged to make the navigable canal. The area is now part of a nature preserve, and because there are no trails in this particular section, it's little visited and remains relatively undisturbed. I had been walking around those dunes for about 20 minutes, and suddenly noticed that there in the sand was a flower or star-shaped form that looked a great deal like one I had found in the forest of northern Wisconsin--in a very wet environment, among the hardwoods. I had been amazed at that form, and was able to identify it as an earthstar fungus (Astraeus hygrometricus, family Diplocystaceae). Young specimens look like puffballs, but when they mature and it is moist (one of their nicknames is "barometer earthstar"), the mushrooms open out into an earthstar shape, (the outer layer of the fruit body tissue splits open in a star-like manner). This was piece was sitting in the sand, and there were no large deciduous trees nearby. Could it really be the same thing? My husband, who was with me, wasn't even convinced it was a fungus; he insisted it had to be a flower.

The first level of play is just the processing--seeing how they respond when wet and dry, experimenting with their behavior. The ones I collected from the sand were soon dried up and curled back in themselves, but when I re-hydrated them they became dimensional flowers once again. Could I press them when damp and convince them to maintain their flattened star shape? (The image of the weighted book--a dictionary!--shows how I attempted to do this.) It worked to a point, but unless there's lots of moisture in the air, they always want to curl. (Another factoid that once again shows the brilliance of nature: dry fruit bodies with the rays curled up may be readily blown about by the wind, allowing them to scatter spores from the pore as they roll.)

I hope you can enjoy some of this earthstar play with me in the photos below.

I don't have any new collage or assemblage that incorporate these new friends, although I hope that will be coming now that I have a good supply. What I can offer is the delight of the star/flower form, mixed with a variety of color and texture, as seen in these altered photos. Wonder-full!

Remember: pay attention, be amazed, be astonished, play with it, and love what is hidden all around us.

 
I’d like to share the story of my beach walk yesterday.  It was a lovely day, in the mid-70s and not windy, and even before I checked the weather, I had a feeling I should go to the beach in the afternoon. There was no particular agenda, but I always bring a collecting bag and like to take a long walk, well past the folks who have settled near the beach entrance. (I am blessed to live by the Gulf of Mexico in southwest Florida, near a sandy key (cay) where one can walk unimpeded for about 20 miles. My end of the key is generally quiet, and not too crowded. There are a few county-run access places with free parking lots, bathrooms, and picnic tables, but even past the park boundaries there are only private homes back beyond the dunes; happily, there are no high rises, restaurants or resort hotels anywhere nearby.)
 
As I set out walking south, I reminded myself to stay open to surprises, to try to pick up on synchronicities and see what gifts were offered, both in tangible form and as metaphor or inspiration. This is a practice that some people refer to as following everyday oracles. Dreamwork leader and shaman Robert Moss invented the world "kairomancy" to describe the practice of navigating by synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence. I love playing with this kind of navigation and find it can be quite profound.  
 
The first thing I encountered was a fisherman engaged in a mighty battle with something on the end of his line. It was obviously a powerful creature, as he had to grip very tightly and stand his ground with great force. There were about five other men gathered around, and one woman. Even as he was pulling, the men were going on about different kinds of fishing exploits. I asked the man with the rod what it was he was trying to land, and he said it was a sting ray. I watched as the creature thrashed about, pulling itself further out even as he worked mightily to pull it in.  I was uncomfortable and began to walk away, but found I couldn’t; I needed to see the animal that was so forcefully resisting him. It was exquisite—more than two feet across, noble-looking, though wounded, with gaping red spots in several places. The line was hooked into its belly (actually it looked to be under its mouth), and I literally winced, sensing the pain of the tugging line. One of the onlookers identified it as a cownose ray, which, as I learned when I looked it up later, can live in these waters for as many as 18 years. These rays eat crustaceans, and have few predators, other than humans.
The video that shows them in action underlines their grace and beauty.

The men had been talking about landing “him” (the ray), how “he” was so strong, and what a feat it was to get “him” to shore.  I kept feeling this might actually be a female. Despite any kind of gender consciousness-raising in the culture at large, that male pronoun is still what English-speakers use to describe wild animals. It's still the way we think. It further sets up the battle, of course: one “he” vs. another “he,” fighting for the position of alpha male. The men cut the line to send the ray back, acting quickly so it wouldn’t be out of the water for long, but I still felt angry and distressed. Fishing for food is one thing –I eat fish myself—but this kind of tug-of-war was literally war, or better put, literally torture for the ray; it served no purpose other than for the man on the beach to proclaim his power.  Had he (and all the other men) no sense of the fact that this animal with a sharp hook pulling in its flesh was hurting?  I did speak up about it, but I knew they wouldn’t listen; the man with the rod was the victor, enjoying the fact that he had won at his sport, and he believed he was humane in that he didn’t “waste” the fish. I moved off, leaving them to their sense of satisfaction as the ray was returned to the sea.

Was this my sign or gift? The sight of that beautiful animal, glistening in the sun, its eyes wide and its “wings” flapping? Or was it the awareness that these men, like all of us, are, as those who follow the Course in Miracles would say, children of God? In one of the Sufi dances I love we greet each person as “the face of God,” and say, “I hold you in my heart; you are a part of me.” I grumbled a bit, but kept sending that out to the fishermen, and told myself: “no exceptions. They are a part of me too, we are one.” I sent out the love I could to the wounded animal and to the people of the fishing party, praying that everyone would wake up to the pain of others to the point where they couldn’t continue to inflict it.

I was not too happy with that gift, although I accepted it as an important reminder—both of the fact that we still have not arrived at a time when the divine feminine principle/consciousness is shared by all (i.e., that I must be patient), and that I don’t only get to pick feel-good gifts. But as I kept walking, I realized there was an unusual accumulation of well-smoothed stones on the beach. Some were the expected (for this beach) black fossil bones, but others appeared to be made of a range of other minerals. I rarely see stones there, and quickly accepted them as messengers too. There were many small fossilized shark’s teeth scattered among them (that’s the “treasure” that so many hunt for on this beach), so I realized part of the message was, “just pay attention. It will be given.” But it went beyond that. I thought back to my musings on rock consciousness that I posted last month, and to my ongoing hyper-awareness of stones. These stones I was encountering are ancient; the fossilized ones date back to the Ice Age, maybe 50 million years ago.  All of them have old, old, old awareness.  The message came through: “Take the long view. Be patient. Consciousness is shifting.” 

Still further down the beach, in addition to the abundant piles of shells (the usual clams, whelk, scallops, pen shells, jingle shells, and more), I spotted something I had never seen before that reminded me of an angel’s wing. It was vaguely shell-like, but looked more like a plant pod than animal material, and when I found an example that was falling apart, I felt this hypothesis reinforced, since it seemed to have vegetal fibers and pattern growth. Some of the pods had clearly traveled the Gulf waters for some time, however, for they had barnacles attached.  There was no tree nearby with pods like these, so they had probably been swept up (in) from somewhere else. I kept spotting more. I will try to determine what they are,*** but since my first reaction was “angel wing,” I knew to recognize the sign: "there are angels present, or phrased differently, there are helpful spirits here." There are so many gifts, when you start to receive.  I looked up just then and saw angel wing formations in the clouds as well. There were many different types of clouds, actually: the etheric-looking angel wings; some well-formed cumulus puffs that looked like they belonged in a Grant Wood painting; some low-lying cloud blankets; and some wispy, fast-moving ones in another part of the sky.  The message was not too subtle: "abundance, so many different forms and manifestations, and everything always changing."
****UPDATE (June 2019): I learned from a helpful visitor to my studio that this wing-shaped bit of detritus is in fact a part of a mollusk, it is not a shell, per se. This is a like the protective covering of a whelk's "foot." It is separate hard, horny plate, called an operculum, which acts like a trap door when the living animal withdraws into the shell. It is sometimes called a “shoe.”

I gathered the angel wings to take home, identify, and perhaps incorporate in my art. I also gathered my share of other things—a few shark’s teeth, some of the little Sputnik-like burrs that come from Australian pines, some crab shells and well-aged fish bones, and some large clam shells that I am using to delineate garden bed borders. My collecting bag got very heavy. I lugged it home, shifting it from shoulder to shoulder, and smiling at the people I passed stretched out on their lounge chairs and blankets.  When I arrived in my garage, I took everything out of the bag so I could sort, clean, and marvel. This is part of the after-beach ritual: wash your findings off to remove sand, dirt and living matter, arrange the pieces with the others like them, and eventually put them in the studio, organized well enough so they can be easily retrieved.

Yes, a day in the blessed life. There were the always-present other gifts, too: the flock of terns gathered together and taking off in a cloud of white; the line of pelicans gliding overhead; the lapping of the soft waves and the sun creating diamonds on the water as far as the eye could see. No dolphins appeared, but I knew they were out there somewhere, just as I knew there were more rays and so much other life. I am gifted, gifted, and I appreciate, and I am watching the signs so I can learn to be more appreciative, more in wonder, more in harmony.  I thank this amazing mother planet and all that lives on it, including, yes including, those parts that create pain and disharmony from a lack of awareness of our interbeing. May we all rise to be counted as part of the one, to know our oneness and to claim it.

  Sometimes we find ourselves singing a song or humming a tune, and when we pay attention and focus in on it, we realize it's a kind of subconscious message--the lyrics express a not-fully-realized emotion, for example, or an unarticulated hope. It can be a powerful tool of self understanding.  I call this becoming aware of the "hummer." One of the songs that repeatedly comes up in my hummer is "Centering Home," written many years ago by Molly Scott.  The "centering home" phrase that repeats over and over refers to the idea of always coming back to the path, and following it home to the center. The idea of the center is of course a long-familiar spiritual principle. There are myriad treatises written about the center itself, and about moving to and from it. There are myriad ways of representing it. The mandala is one manifestation. In Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, the circular mandala, emanating in a geometrically regular pattern from a central point, represents the universe. We see this ad infinitum in nature, in the geometric formulae that repeat on every scale, and in what we are now easily able to see in infinitely fascinating fractals. In Eastern traditions, mandalas were (are) used as meditation tools that help bring the practitioner into balance and harmony. In Western psychology and dream analysis, mandalas are similarly said to represent an individual's search for completeness, wholeness, and integration.

What I offer here are photos I've taken in widely diverse places and contexts that capture this sense of mandala, moving (often spiraling) in (or out) to (and from) a center. Many of the images are unsurprising--there are umpteen plants and animals (or parts of animals) that grow from a central point. In our image-heavy media, we're familiar with these, and we've even become used to astonishing photos of space and galaxies that remarkably reflect photos of small forms like seashells--images of macro/micro resonance (a concept I was playing with 50 years ago, I joyfully add!).

On one level this collection of mine might thus feel a bit trite, but I still find the images newly-compelling, and we can always stand to be brought back again to center. When we witness this primal form and centering journey in so many different manifestations, it reinforces our understanding of the underlying unity of this planet. I intermix photos of natural forms with photos of human-made objects that reflect the same idea, further reminding us that we are inexorably a part of nature and the natural world, and we manifest its inherent impulses. And finally, since these are my own photographs (I shot almost all of them, and a few are even taken from my own art; the few images taken by others are ones that I have previously used in my professional work and have become very intimate with), they are my personal offering; they are my shout-out to the universe and to remembering and returning to the center. If you click on an individual image you will often find a caption explaining what it is. I included explanations where I thought the photo might not be self-evident, or where the element of surprise might add to the delight.

 We've all heard the phrase that "the eyes are the window to the soul," and in the last few months I've been looking at art with a particular focus on the eyes,  considering the way we might really glimpse the soul the artist was seeing. It's an interesting exercise, one that could be used as a productive writing prompt.

I came to realize that perhaps the most distancing (and sometimes disturbing) aspect of masks is those empty eyes--it's more than the fact that a particular identity is hidden. The blankness is fundamentally disturbing, even though we may be able to feel the character or emotion inscribed by a good mask maker, and even though the blank eyes allow us to project something archetypal.
Here are a few examples of empty eyes (remember to click on the images for a fuller view):

Masks or sculpted faces that keep the blankness but fill in the holes seem melancholy, but are more relatable.

It's the eyeballs, literally, that enliven the face, and we feel most kinship with those that include the spark of light. I know I'm getting a little carried away here with this many images, but I find them so fascinating that it's hard to edit many out. Let your eyes wander over these eyes, and see which grab you and why.

Finally, I couldn't resist: the light shining through the eyes of some real folks--the artist, other than the camera, is the divine spark of creation itself. Whether the eyes are open wide or crinkled in a smile, the soul window is clearly present.

I really enjoy exploring cemeteries, especially those created in the 19th century with park-like landscapes. I have so much to say about this--the meaning of the Indian effigy mounds in my nearby Forest Hill cemetery, and how they were made to keep a kind of cosmological balance; the flock of robins I encountered there recently (yes, they do flock together and roost in trees in cold weather); and so much more. (As enticement for some future post, here's one image showing part of one of these mound).

The subject of the post, though, is about stone--rock-- which is a central part of the cemetery experience. It is of course all around; gravestones are ubiquitous, from identical plain veteran's gravestones placed in neat rows to towering obelisks erected to proclaim that powerful men will take up a great deal of space, even in death. There are even solid marble gazing balls that must have taken enormous skill to carve. Stone, everywhere. Solid, appearing in a range of different colors. Stone, with dignity and staying power.

It's interesting to note that the tradition of leaving rocks is not limited to Jewish graves any more; others are increasingly finding it a meaningful tradition. And parenthetically, there is a growing practice of leaving coins on (non-Jewish American) military gravestones. There is a code of meaning, with each coin symbolizing a particular relationship with the deceased. A nickel would be left by someone who was in boot camp with the fallen soldier, while a quarter would indicate the visitor was present when the person was killed.

Other than remarking on an interesting practice, I am impelled to write about these memory stones because I've been feeling the energy of rocks so strongly. It's hard to write about; it's a feeling, an intimation about something. It is not a concept.  I tried to capture some of it with my poems and images of the rocks on Mt. Shasta (August, 2018), and it has to do with the rocks holding the holographic imprint, holding memory, but maybe a much longer, deeper memory than we even know. Not exactly really permanent, but so long-lived by our standards that it comes close. Discussions of the Jewish custom of leaving rocks keep referring back to the Bible and the rocky landscape that was part of Jewish history. The stone on which Abraham was to have sacrificed Isaac is referred to as hashityah, the foundation stone of the world. A pile of stones could be a sacred place, a place of prayer. Moses sat on "the Rock," and carved the tablets from it. Jacob's Ladder rose from a stone.  On the darker side, people were stoned to death, and "stony" implies unyielding, cold, and without empathy.

I was very moved recently in driving through the Atlas mountains in Morocco. This is a dramatic region, all about rock and stones. The terrain consists of stones for miles and miles and miles, sometimes pebble-sized, sometimes big boulders. Houses are built of stone. Stone tumbles into rivers. Sheep and goats climb over high stony peaks. I kept sensing the stone memory, the consciousness held in all that rock, but I couldn't really access or translate it. I felt stone-ness, but there are no words or concepts to say what it was I felt.  At one point one of my traveling companions remarked that she wouldn't want any of that "real estate"--it was too much relentless rock, too hard to deal with, too unfriendly. Rocky terrain=trouble. I reacted almost viscerally; yes that's true, I thought, but you aren't asking what the stones know, you aren't feeling into the stone or the stone space. Maybe those who live here live deep in the stone, know what the stone knows, hold stone memory. Maybe the rock remembers them. Maybe they have another, silent experience that you can't even imagine.

Maybe.  Right now, today, I will hold some stones and breathe with them: round smooth ones tossed by Lake Michigan, and sparkly ones from riverbeds in the high Andes (another oh-so-rocky landscape). I will even touch the very fine sand I brought back from the Sahara--sand that was stone, ground down to the consistency of fairy dust. Maybe I will breathe them in, absorb their stone wisdom. Maybe I will be taken into the secrets of stone.

I've just returned from traveling in Morocco. There are so many impressions--sunrise on the Sahara, sheep and goats climbing the top ridges of the dramatic Atlas mountains, ubiquitous arches, painted wood, tilework, fabulous doors--but what I kept wanting to capture with my camera was the way so much was bathed--or literally painted--in color. Consider this post a continuation of my previous offering of color images. Here, I focus on the many permutations of blue, from the blue city to the blue pots to the blue-clad Taureg people (no longer wearing indigo-dyed cloth, though they still call it that and are proud of the connection).  I will probably share much more from the trip, but here's a way of checking back in. I offer you a way to "tangle up in blue" and bathe in its endless textures.

I have been making small sculptural figures that incorporate natural materials for a great many years now. The first came through in the early 1970s. I can't even remember all of them, but the two from that time that lasted the longest incorporated pine needles and snail shells. I always related to those figures as totemic, holding a kind of spiritual power. At that time I thought of them as kachinas, a term I borrowed from the Hopi and other Puebloan peoples. I adopted the term because I had been introduced to the concept of the kachinas (katsinas) when I visited the southwest. Kachinas are spirit figures, immortal beings that interact with humans--they are in effect messengers between the spirit and human worlds, and can intervene with human life, for example by bringing rain. There are ceremonies where individuals actually embody kachinas, dressing in ritual regalia and dancing their energy. Even more ubiquitous are the kachina "dolls," which are carved wooden figures that were traditionally given to girls to help them learn the cast of spirit characters. A few simple kachina images are pictured here to give a visual to go with this story.

My figures did not literally look like Hopi kachinas, but had "heads" resting on more or less tubular bodies. I was not carving, but assembling the parts, and I had not mastered the technical aspects of making these in a sturdy fashion. I felt connected to the idea, but stopped making them as my attention was brought to other arenas. I also realized that I was appropriating a term and concept, and especially as time went on and I became more sensitive to this, I felt more uncomfortable using the term for my own work.

Fast forward a long time, to about the turn of the 21st century. One day as I was dancing around in my attic, where I had baskets holding some of the very materials I collected in the 1970s--shells, leather pouches, driftwood--I literally felt something re-awaken. I've referred to this as my "muse" waking up. I saw those materials that had stayed with me for decades and began to imagine them coming together as beings once again. I had new ideas about how to construct the figures, and I knew their new forms demanded a new name. I settled on (Las) Tierras, which I translate as Earth Beings.  Many of the people who see them refer to them as dolls, but I don't relate to them that way. To me they are indeed still spirit figures, intermediaries, not mini-humans. They each have their own character, often emanating from their materials, but they embody energies from another realm. This does not make them unapproachable; like dolls, they are relatable. They are compelling, but not all equally serious--some are funnier than others. Some are forceful, some shy, some mysterious. Some can be disturbing, mostly because their materials remind people of decay and death.

Each Tierra has a story of its own genesis, of its materials and where they come from, and if I ask, each will tell me of its essence. I didn't name them at first, but eventually I had to, just to keep them straight in my mind and even be able to refer to them in my own record-keeping files. I don't always like to share these tiles, since I find if I let people encounter them without names, they relate to them differently; they resonate with them in a more personal way. (The figures can act as a kind of Rorshach experience--one sees what is on one's mind and in one's heart.)  Here I am sharing images of some of the Tierras that have made their way into my life over the last 15 years or so, and offering some information on the materials. Perhaps in the future I will tell more of the process stories, and can certainly supply a name if it is requested.

Many of you may be familiar with the concept of light language --what is sometimes referred to as a universal, multidimensional language understood with the heart, or understood by everyone on a soul level. Some people express the language through their voice (singing or toning), some through movement, and sometimes, it is represented visually as a kind of script or cipher. I first encountered this many years ago through the images of Bryan de Flores, who essentially channeled  the images he called "accelerators."

For anyone who has never seen this kind of "writing," here are a few examples one can find on the web:

I can't translate--it's all still a mystery--but maybe my heart and soul do respond, because I have a consistent attraction to this material. Lately, as I walk through the environment, I've started seeing tree roots as the same kind of messengers. It's hard to photographically capture them quite as I see them, but I'm sharing a bit of what I've encountered here. (In some cases I have transformed the images a little to capture the feeling. I hope to work more on these and other transformations later, honing the images to allow them to fully communicate).  In the meantime, take in each image and allow it to speak to you. (Remember to click on the images for the full, enlarged view.)  Imagine yourself in the forest  where the trees are such strong presences, and see what comes. And if YOU can translate, please share what comes through!