like the hole

when the bee and me
fall from grace
the flowers lose their face
and i just make dough
french style
sour and pungent
enticing plumes to
solidify ceramic
in the belly
scrape me scrape me
pollinate and mate me
life is never ending

Our Emerging Being & the Fearlessful Soul

Like cells mytosing, we humans are evolving into a greater organism of our very own.

Giant leaps... leaping from societies of fire into a global dynamic powered by electricity... leaping from abstract fresh baby through to wise old person... leaping from the earth to the stars.

How does it happen?

Consciousness fitting into new molds. Leaps of faith or of understanding or both? Or more? Quantum leaps? Nutritional leaps? Neuronal leaps?

We will come to peace when we know what part of the organism we are a part of and essential to.

We will start to be full of care when we realize our health depends on the whole health, the bigger health.

We will take responsibility for the energies we attract and presence we project.

Different religions may actually be a fight for directions to define what mold the emergent being will seek.
The changing momentum of emergence, like labor pains in birth, are heralded throughout religious history:
Some call it (almost sexually): the second coming.
Some imagine themselves reborn onto giant lilypads, dining upon grapes under starlit women.
Some see a spiral of reincarnating beings trying to evolve to higher selves.
Others see an apocalypse of humanity (though it has never been clear whether it includes all living beings.)
Some see zillions of personalized paradises.
Some see a single pulsing white-hot sea of love.
Some see a reunion with all their riches & properties forever theirs.
Others see transcendence from physical materialism into sheer spiritual ismlessism.
The battle is on and the competition is fierce, hungry for adherent souls.

The whole quest may be moot-
It is a distraction from the only reality proven to us all:
the breath of now, now and now again and again now...
For me, the real question and answer remain here on earth, now in this life.
How do you want to live now? Do you want to survive amidst violent pollution?
Or do you want live within simple love & pure joy?
What are you going to do to get there?

Daily tips:
- Fear neither others nor yourself. Resonate and elevate.
- Watch where your bullshit is leading people, or better yet: where it is leading you (mosquito bureaucrats spreading viruses thru fly-shit paper for power pushers.)
- As Annie Sprinkle says: Breathe. Say yes to bliss. Ask where are our monuments to happiness.
- Act responsibly towards all life, enjoy the harvest of the cycles we ride, the waves we surf and the tides we create.

I think we get the picture now. We are getting far too numerous and divided to continue as such, we must orgasm as one to create a fully activated & empowered world being.

Why do birds migrate? (why fly?)

BECAUSE IT IS A GREAT WAY TO LIVE!
A true higher conscious experience of life, so removed from our destructive stasis of defection from the mud (which is where we really emerged from dust to dust, and water to mud, and light to clay, time to movement and space to play.)

Imagine flying...first of all. Whoever invented that finally got it right. Ask the angels. Ask the flies.
Then imagine flying over the whole world, hugging the terrain yet keeping far enough away to simply be cradled by the whispers and long flows of the wind.
Then, on top of it all, you CAN land and walk around, pecking at juicy exotic bugs, feasting on the ripening of fruits, and you CAN also float and feel the sea bucking, picking up fresh sushi from the freshest and most remote spawns, lakes and tributaries.

The cream of this traveling existence from gooder to goodest comes with the finding of the old familiar neighborhood of the ancestors, finding the tree branch or nook to build a cozy nest, and it's hump, hump, lay an egg. Then it all starts over again!

Why do cranes migrate? Pffff, what a question!

The Enlivening Art of Laetitia Bermejo

Laetitia Bermejo Castelnau is an electron dancing on the provocative edge of the atom. Bermejo has a talent for loosening taut nerves that constrain judgment, and allowing for laughter to enter the equation. Personal visions result, as waves of pigmented colors and descriptive intensities radiate from her artwork to tickle our neurons. As viewers and thinkers, suddenly, we feel more alive.

Laetitia Bermejo’s work is a growing organism- part mineral, part vegetal, part animal- whose leaves and limbs are all equally nutritious. Her visual production ranges from painting to assemblage to travel journals to installations. Her hands-on experience with her subject is tangible to the eye- you can feel the original impulse morsing through, her representation still attached to its roots and growing into our heads.
And there you are, turning and returning, to see what Laetitia has seen, to feel what she has felt, and to breathe free for that moment, savoring the ambiance- that perception for you from you sinaesthized through the filters of Laetitia´s extraordinary extrapolation mechanism. Parts moving independently. Her mind discovers fresh shapes from used ones. Her hands transcribe anew the mental imprint of a much-visited global reality. Her fingers massage our eyes and thoughts as they work their universal significations. And so begins our journey into this artist’s realm.

For many years, Laetitia Bermejo has painted the wild and willing figures she met and knew in many places around the world. She trained, swam and flew, bringing her pen and blank book along. She has sat and walked and drew, her life as a poem with her paintings as her song.
But one day, the music died down, as did many beings around her, retreating into the shadows as the colors drained from the world, and the painting stopped. While warlords fought over humanitarian aid, Laetitia picked through the reminders of her life, and of life in general, and she came across object-events and the threading of synchronicities. And so, she began sewing the pieces together: assorted stone hearts woven into a mandala, the real glamour Barbie from Chile refrocked as the imagined (though much too real) Mujaheddin Barbie, sheep bones dug-up sewn into the skeleton of a new christ incarnation. The ironic as irritant, humor as a punctum.
Piercing through the darkness of the newspapers, Laetitia Bermejo salvages glimmers of meaning. Why transcribe a sad situation? So as not to ignore it. So as to reconsider it. Why paint a joyful moment? So as to remember that feeling. So as to enjoy it again even if you were not there. Laetitia is an observer and a provider in this cycle of life and art. Sometimes she sketches the basics of a moment to expand it later upon canvas and sometimes she just observes a situation until she can’t take it in any longer then goes to work. Capturing the imprint, retranslating it without the mundane details, and reworking it until the expressivity convinces her hypercritical eye. And then, it is yours to plant, water and watch. A fertile emotional intelligence downloading its silent action, leaping out into our passive observations and stirring us up.

My imagination appreciates being invited into such full moon paintings- where the whole neighborhood is dancing, cheek to cheek, junkie to drunkard, mama to papa and all the habibis running naked through the woods, howling alongside unladen women. And my intelligence enjoys the freedom of the morning-after, awakening to such sun-drenched assemblages- where the hangover of opinion tans to the sound of a soothing but irrefutable dripping of glass, where the superiority of judgment is squeezed into an equality of questioning as our earth dries up and Bermejo throws in her juice.

And while Laetitia Bermejo´s paintings flicker and giggle, her bones hum. And the song returns- qué vive.


TO DISCOVER MORE & START TO FEEL EVEN GOODER THAN BEFORE, CLICK HERE

From the State that Brought You Ronald Reagan and the Beachboys, Now Comes a Whole New Kind of Rock'n'Roll

Valencia, CA.

We just had another tremor. I was waiting in line when a total stranger clutched on to my arm. I was about to confront the person when I felt my legs dance from a completely different order, not originating from my brain. Then all was back to normal, we smiled at eachother and kept waiting. It has become commonplace to have the earth turn liquid on us, just as liquid turns solid with cold.
A week and a half have passed since the 6.6 earthquake of Jan.17. Our school is located right on this previously unknown fault line. The epicenter was 10 miles away, in Northridge, where three-story buildings became one-story, parking lots folded, gas mains broke causing block fires, a whole university was condemned, thousands became instantly homeless from house damage and fear. 2,000 aftershocks registering 2.5 or more have been recorded. The earth has tried to shake us fleas off but we have held on and now mutated back into ants, we have almost resumed life to normal- clearing freeways and providing water at amazing speed. About 50 people died during the earthquake. Others live stronger.
Sleeping in my pick-up truck last night (which has suddenly become the envy of many), I woke up to what sounded like an underground implosion- >>FWAH-BOOM<< from the earth- I woke up afterwards but had a lucid retroactive memory of it. Kept looking out my windows for a gas fire between moments of sleep.
My institute has yellow police-ribbons going all around it as though a big bandage keeping it together. It is "red-tagged" for the moment. No one can go in until the city says o.k. and the school president says o.k. and the provost says o.k. and our dean says o.k. And with each aftershock over 3.3, the whole school has to be checked all over again and then o.k.s, etc.
Two dorms are condemned- they moved a foot off their foundations- very drafty. More homeless. Porta-toilets provide resolution for tight-leggers who don't want to run off into the sparse woods. A tent city has been established as our new campus. Still no gas and water and the coldest weather of the year and rain and no mail. But we are alive, even the two iguanas belonging to Jill from downstairs. (They were very very stiff and unamused when they were finally found, clutching to the corner of the ceiling.) Nerves are still taut, chairs are knocked over at the slightest shake, muscles are sore from tension, conversation is distracted by thoughts of ceilings falling.
People testify about the earthquake any chance they get, hoping to rid themselves of the experience by spilling it out their mouths. Most were asleep at the time but no one remained that way. Some thought this was their time to go, some got under chairs for a moment of safety-training insight, others thought they were being attacked and beat up, one girl was certain she was on a boat in a storm as a glass of water poured over her, and three different people have spoken about how they believed they were being possessed- Meholtchick thought the same and when it was all over he asked his roommate whether it was him or the room that had been possessed. One girl got spliced by falling glass, in her painting studio, and dragged herself out of the building, naked and bleeding, then fainted outside. She returned to Canada. Michael went back to England. Lourdes back to Mexico. Laoora back to Iceland. And others back to Germany and the East coast. Withdrawal rate has gotten to 25% so far. School will be extended by two weeks and will take place in rented and donated places around Santa Clarita valley and Los Angeles. The president of the school, Steven Levine, even talked of relocating our entire school, this semester, to the Lockhead Missile base, which would give us a cafeteria of 10,000 sq.ft. and a fabulous security system. In case you have thought of renting this place at some future date, it costs $250,000 a month though they might give it to us for $125,000/mo. And they say there will be no tuition hike! They didn't get any earthquake insurance because of the small deductible= ten million dollars. One generous parent has helped with a $10,000 donation which will help in keeping this private institution greased for the lengthy and costly work ahead- they are talking of tearing down and rebuilding damaged foundation walls.
I just had a class in a storefront, which made our discussion on consumerism take on a ghostly shadow of the whole situation where education becomes a product rather than a process (many people are withdrawing because they don't feel they will get their money's worth- very valid but relative.) Luckily, this shake-up has brought us ALL, students-staff-and faculty, to the same level: smelly, cold, and clueless. Resourcefulness and improvisation have reclaimed the importance they should have in every day life. Maybe that is why the lecture seemed so much more engaging.
Because I did not experience the most severe earthquake (I was long-weekending it in San Diego), I may perhaps be feeling survivor's guilt and I have consequently had a very impressive dream that has brought my mental faculties to a state of empathy:
[ In a green and misty land, much as I imagine Ireland to be, I was having breakfast in a country-style diner. I was with several friends in this crowded place, all obviously unable to eat at home because of the ravages of the earthquake. The diner was on a small cliff, perched over calm grey waters. It was located at the end of a rolling stretch of lawn and in between several hovering barn and silo structures.
Once in a while as we were eating, somebody would say "What was that?" We would freeze, hear nothing and continue eating. The tremors grew a bit then dissipated. But my nerves synapsed harder each time and I excused myself for air. Once outside, a thunderous earthquake began. I knew I would be crushed under the shoddy thin-walled barn if I didn't get out of my spot. The earth continued to pitch and I realized I could only move from the petrifying centri-gravital force if I moved in the same disorganized fashion as the shakes. I had to get 'in tune' with nature. Once I was out of danger from being collapsed upon, I then realized that the earth was cracking open all around. Again I had to dance the quirky earthworm to remain on the few integral islands of land. The earth kept on shifting and I looked in all directions and recognized that my relative position was safe, then it all stopped.
People shuffled out, zombie-eyed, from the diner. I asked my friends if they paid the bill and was a bit annoyed when they said no. They requested that we leave away from there, maybe over to Antartica, and off we went.]
Why don't we act upon our dreams? What if they are they indicating resolutions to our fears or intuiting the future? Well... people argue there is natural danger everywhere: some freeze for months, others die of thirst or flood, fires lick the land clean and winds coat it with disarray. Though sometimes it seems like Los Angeles submits to all of these and more (are riots natural outbursts?), our greatest disaster takes only 30 seconds of our time- talk about instant gratification- and then we are left with nothing. None of this nonsense of endless days of cold stripping away our defences, or of water inching up the walls, or of wind battering at the door. It might wake us early some days, like 4:31 am, but at least it's an efficient monster and makes its point quickly. Though some of us are still waiting for the punchline.

May this new year of 1994 prove to be as peaceful as it has proven to be exciting. The balance already seems to exist in nature, it is up to humans to fit in. It seems the only real control we have is self-control.