I've just completed a poem that addresses the inner wisdom about letting go of struggle, and when I sat with it, I was aware how much of an ongoing theme this is for me. I knew even as I was working on it that The Worry Coat energetically echoed a piece called Incantation that I wrote nearly 30 years ago. When I went to look for Incantation I found other poems from the intervening years that also spoke to the issue of release. My collages come back to that over and over again as well. too. Reviewing the images in this light added yet another layer to this understanding. I am left with a sense of comfort--almost as if someone is smiling at me and putting a hand on my shoulder, saying, "yes, my dear, this is your work, your life path. Enjoy it, and hold fast." 

It's powerful to trace the consistent themes of the inner journey, and it's fascinating too, to see the way they keep appearing in different guises. The trajectory of a lifetime: a strong part of me always seeking to reach up out of human limitation and pain, always trying to get closer to oneness and the light. There are so many pieces I could include here! But I have been selective. I chose only a few of the examples that focus on release, and decided to save the work that features the helping energies or spirits that sometimes comes through for a later time. What I offer here are three poems, written about a decade apart (these are in reverse order), and a handful of collages and the messages they communicated.


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             THE WORRY COAT (June, 2018)
 
You’ve fashioned a coat, worked on it for years
adding burrs, scratchy threads that shoot in all directions
You’ve spent so much time plying the threads, interlacing them to a thick mass, felted-in tighter all the time, with each push of the hands.
It’s crafted well, once-graceful edges blunted to roughness.
 
Oh those jumbled colors, jagged juxtapositions like frayed nerves.
It’s heavy, overloaded with grime and layers of painful moments,
strata of fear.
You wear it, and it weighs you down.
Your shoulders ache, your back bends in submission.
 
Zoom out. Bird’s eye view now, taking it in with clear night vision.
Why, asks the flying one, can’t we just remove this garment, lift it
up and away, and throw it to the north wind,
who will carry it off to a stream bed to decompose.
 
Why bear it any more, this coat of thorns, obscuring the body below?
Uncovered, your skin is smooth, fresh and pliant, unencumbered.
It’s easy to touch, to run a hand over. No stopping in the brambles.
 
Speak now, in bird language, and claim your ground.
You are whole without that coat, ready to move in rhythm,
to pelican glide with ease.
Let the river undo the plies of worry.
Go now without a costume, and having shed the coat,
feel the guidance of the breeze.
 


      GESTURES THAT CALL FOR THE LIGHT (January, 2008)
 
There is a beckoning
a slight breath blowing softly
here in the winter cold
when life isn’t easy,
and even breathing can be a chore
when the body needs layers of protection
 
those gestures in the distance,
not altogether absent
but without force or power
 
I despair of old habits
the fury of the joy-thief
the insistence on weightiness
that pulls it down
the empty place of denial
the light imprisoned.
 
Time to focus on the beckoning
that gestures in perpetual motion.
 
                                                                          
 
      INCANTATION FOR N.  (June, 1989)
 
The darkness of your tunnel
   With its compression walls
      Will start glowing.
 
The tightness will soften around you.
   Silken fingers will touch you lightly.
      Mind webs will release.
  
The tunnel illuminating, you
    Will not need the weight.
 
Ease, the birthright river,
   Will spread from bank to bank.
 
Take a breath:
You are emerging.
 
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DARK DREAM
Dimensional collage: Paper, palm bark and palm fragment, goat hair
10” x 12” framed
2017
 
I am in a dream state, holding sadness as I look backward at the pain we have created.  I am deep in the vision of what has gone before. At the same time, I can turn the healing mandala (the Shaker vision of heaven on earth) to that very past to help it release. Know that I see pain, but am a healer, not a sufferer.

LIFE FORCE: WAITING FOR RELEASE
Paper collage (SoulCollage (R) card)
5" x 8"
2014
 
I am a dream of forever, an offering to eternity, well wrapped to try to hold in my energy of life. I have a painted face, a mere ghost of the life force, I am the reminder that we mummify, try to stop time. All is held within me, tight, contained, yet dead, bound in linen, crisscrossed diamonds, a yearning for the heart, getting  to the core at the deepest level.  I look up, awaiting forever. See—my mouth is sunken,  I cannot speak with my own voice.  Wanting to be unbound, to sink into the earth, allowing the real eternal life –composting and continuing--to go on. 
 
And behind me the ongoing life force, bursting, beautiful, irrepressible, the glow of energy—that’s the light, eternal, bubbling into planets, into cells, bubbling into form. I dream of exploding, alive life force, not caught in religion, sacrifice, in wrapped-up form. I want unwinding and the bindings removed, my essence to let go to the ever-present now of being.

ANCESTRAL PAIN
Dimensional collage: Paper, paper beads, fossilized shark’s teeth.
8” x 10”
2018
 
I am somewhat stupefied by the pain that has been inflicted over so many, many years. I am waiting to be released and to return to my true glorious legacy. I have riches, and loving energy has made me what I am. I am waiting, but ready to shed impediments and fully shine once more—to smile, with the beauty of the true wealth, not the imagined wealth of conquest and hierarchy.

SUFFERERS CALLED TO AWAKEN
Paper collage (SoulCollage (R) card featuring underwater statues by Jason deCaires featured at MUSA Cancun
5" x 8"
2012
 
Holders of the pain. Some, from the multitude, targeted, the light hones in on us and asks us to lighten up, to awaken to the other dimension, turn tears to emeralds and light catchers. 
Our crowns are awakened, we are marked, called, targeted. We are not to be frozen but to remember and turn golden. We are the mourners who are asked to stop mourning, unfreeze, awaken, lighten up, act.  Grief and mourning, targeted by the light to move, to awaken and enlighten, to move out and up.

ASCENSION
Dimensional collage:Altered paper, palm efflorescence, pieces of pen shell, porcupine fish spines, paint, glass beads.
9” x 11” framed.
2018

Lightening up, shifting from one plane to another. We glow, with bits of matter flying into a new form of being

I'm at work on a number of blog posts--bones 2.0, 3.0 etc., thoughts on giving new life to "dead" materials like shells and bones, making vessels, and more. As a kind of placeholder here, I'm sharing images I've taken on recent travels that I  enlivened with some photo editing, usually with the Prisma app. I see this as quite similar to the "re-animation" I do with natural detritus. That will follow soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the images.

Today, the topic is bones: musings and images, both of bones themselves and some of my pieces that incorporate them. This is a huge topic to tackle, for I have been collecting and working with bones for decades. I have wonderful stories--boiling down deer legs to extract the animal’s toe and shin bones, playing with sea robin skulls, hanging out at the (sadly defunct) Bone Room in Berkeley... I will certainly post Bones 2.0, Bones 3.0 and so on as I am inspired in coming months, and will share more of the particulars. May this entry serve as a teaser that will pull you in for more.

I am drawn to the remarkable forms that bones take, each of course serving a specific and essential structural purpose. And so different--the weightlessness of bird bones, supporting the bird but allowing it to soar; the solidity of a buffalo jaw; the strength for bearing down evident in a horses' tooth; the mandala-like form of concentric rings on a fish vertebrae. Each a truly magnificent design.

It's fascinating that bones hold such a draw for me, since at this point in my life I am quite concerned with bone density. I can almost feel my own bones tingling in sympathetic recognition as I handle the bones of other creatures, feel their heft, clean them, sometimes drill through them or even dye them.  I am saddened by the fact that for most people the typical first association with bone is death. Yes, the bone I work with is no longer living tissue, replete with blood and moisture (living bone is one fourth water), but it holds the imprint of the animal it supported.
 

Here is a selection of pieces I have made with bone.