following the LIght.

Over the RAinbow to Munay

2011-11-04T08:33:00.001-07:00

For me the Road to Q’ero, the journey with Lorenzo, in re -connecting to Munay, is going over the rainbow and Munay is the lynch pin. The very first principle of the Q’ero way of life.

Literally translated. Munay means love.

This is not the word we bandy about all the time.. it is not a platitude. It is not romantic love, but a deep flowing connection to LIFE and the earth and to others that flows straight from the heart. Munay is not looking for something in return, it is a natural flow of warmth and caring. You can’t gather Munay. Munay comes naturally, like grace, when the heart is cleared of debris.

It seems that many of the Q’ero still live in Munay naturally. I’m not sure that Lorenzo would feel you can teach Munay. Munay is woven deeply into the fabric of his being. I think he feels that everyone has this and if they return to the deep connection and respect with the ever non- judgmental Pacha Mama, the Munay will naturally flow again.

Although, even for the Q’ero this is becoming more and more difficult as the industrialized world encroaches closer and closer to their world. In two short years, Lorenzo’s life in Cusco, has shown him the writing on the wall. He has experienced deep heartbreak and loss caused by western medicine used in a thoughtless way, he sees that his children need to learn to read and write in Spanish and at the same time that in one generation it is possible for his children to lose their language and therefore much of their culture and yet it is harder and harder to survive in Q’ero. He is looking for the balance. He sees we need the balance. ( This is called Ayni, reciprocity, and is another theme touched on in the film but I’ll have to go into Ayni in it’s very own post. )

At any rate, it seems that for almost all of us in the industrialized world, the concept of this love, Munay, must be practiced, cultivated, and relearned. Munay flows naturally from each person when the balance within is found. Munay comes from going within and clearing your heart of the dark little patches of debris that have collected and stuck through a lifetime of little and large heartbreaks. The Q’ero call this Hucha, heavy energy. And the work of one’s life time is to drop the heavy energy. When the heart is clear and sunny, Then Munay begins to flow.

It is this heart clearing that Lorenzo is talking about. It is Munay, that Lorenzo implores us to begin re-cultivating and it is munay that brings respect for our fellow man, and other creatures and Pacha mama. When munay begins to flow from each human then service and wisdom will follow naturally.

This is the theme of Road to Q’ero. The journey home is the journey back to our own hearts. And although for us, the teacher comes from the high Andes, Hatun Q’ero, Lorenzo’s message is that you sure don’t have to go on the arduous journey to Q’ero in order to begin. You can begin, right now, wherever you are. Stop. And pay attention to how you feel. Not what you think. But how you FEEL Start right there. Start with what’s truly in your heart right now. Without judgment. Just observe it. And if it doesn’t feel good then work with that so you can let that story go. Clear that debris . Take your shoes off. Connect with Pacha Mama… Lie on the ground. Meditate. Notice your breath. Get a deck of James Wanless’s excellent Sustain Yourself Cards and begin there.

Do or try Anything that helps you drop your heavy energy and move from your mind into your heart.

And if in fact you do want to come with us to meet Lorenzo . Well I’m sure that too can be arranged!! J

In the meantime, we at picaflor, thank all of you from the bottom of our newly re –forming hearts!! With deepest gratitude and respect for supporting us and joining us over the rainbow! We believe deeply in the road to Munay and so happy you are with us!! Sorry for this many words the movie can express this with so much more munay than words will ever be able to convey!

In Munay, Llank’ay, Yachay…

Love , service and wisdom.

xxx

the road to q'ero

2011-10-11T14:27:00.001-07:00

we went over the rainbow to the land of the inca... and were asked to film and bring it home with us... check out the trailer and click like if you do and remember every 15 dollars makes a huge difference to us and to our q'ero family. xxx

the meaning of the hummingbird..

2011-09-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

The hummingbird is a messenger, a messenger of love.
The hummingbird told us to be messengers and the bridge makers between the linear, technological world of the North and the cyclical, natural world of the South.
We are here to help bind the mind and the heart, the physical and spiritual, so that the eagle and the condor may fly together once again.

one of us, jack, julie or i wrote the above on the picaflor blog while in peru.. i'm not sure which of us..but

our picaflor productions logo is the hummingbird for this reason.. and every day of my life this is truly my goal.. and yet

i woke up this morning tangled in feelings that i find unpleasant.. feelings of really not liking another human.. and always when i feel this way it seems the first place i have to look and prod is within myself... was i feeling this way because i wanted to control another's behavior? what kind of mirror is this person for me? blah.. yuck.. is that really a mirror for myself? ..ugh... i don't want to do this.. pout. the only word that kept appearing to me was EGO... arrgh.. it was not a pretty way to wake up and start the day!

i couldn't find a hummingbird anywhere ethereally or otherwise.

so to clarify and get those feelings right up into my head.. ha ha..

i had to look up the word ego .. and there in the oxford english dictionary i found the answer to something that i often get tangled up..

ego is :that part of the mind which has a sense of individuality and is most consious of self.

so this is a good thing, really, it's how i get a camera in my hand or my feet up a mountain with Lorenzo, and all sorts of things in life... this is how i am appearing on the planet.. a thread in a larger fabric which makes a whole beautiful crazy wild amazing quilt. my ego is what helps me navigate being in form and i really don't have to take it seriously or believe it beyond that. and when i remember that other people's behavior is nothing to do with me i can let go of fussing over it. and if their behavior is actually threatening my ego helps ward off the blows of someone coming at me from an entirely egocentric: centred in the ego;self centered, egotisitcal... perspective..with no thought of how others might feel or how you might affect others.

the difference between the two, i realize now, is what trips me up, and perplexes me... we don't need egocentricty really. i think surely in this time of tremendous change that is becoming more and more evident. if we all had egos and believed there was enough for us all to be gloriously joyful, then egocentricity could just fall into oblivion ...

but it seems we forget that there is enough for us all. we somehow don't really believe that we are all so important. we often still feel it is imperative to express our self importance and flash it around. and also, it's hard to imagine when you are being threatened to still view us all as one.. to remember that there is abundance. how do we do that in the face of adversity? dropping heavy energy what does that mean really? and then i found myself in peru with our little production company , who also happens to be my son and his wife, traveling along the sacred valley with lorenzo and his family.. and really, witnessed people walking their talk.. dropping grievances as fast as they could be accrued. always generous.. never ever operating from an egotistical place. and they face adversity.. never enough money. never enough food.. and in his own village in Q'ero, lorenzo is a very important person and people are jealous of him.. let his llamas go to be eaten by pumas.. etc.. not nice..

yet, never once while with lorenzo and juliana, did they ever utter even the smallest complaint, express anger, or frustration.. his biggest expletive was WOW. and it was real and genuine. if the bus was late. we waited. if it rained we got wet and then we dried off. if we lost something we were sad for a minute and then shrugged it off. while in Machu Picchu, their baby, only three months old, became very sick.. juliana looked worried, but she never once showed any sign of freaking out when their healing methods did not work, she simply took care of her baby until we could get back and get him to a doctor.

what we did do every step of the way was a despacho, a ceremony, where we asked permission of the mountain spirits and expressed GRATITUDE GRATITUDE GRATITUDE. we learned, for real, that if people were horrible to you, it was sad, perplexing, but not something you attached to. being hungry is a genuine problem and so when there is food. you thank mama pacha for it.. being with our Q'ero family for a month was one of the greastest lessons in letting go of attachment to control.. letting go of FEAR. that is letting go of heavy energy... they not only shared themselves, their lineage and ancient knowledge, but a beautiful, simple peaceful way through the world. lorenzo and juliana are absolutely secure in their egos and absolutely without egocentricity.. and never lose, even in the face of real adversity, their ability to express joy. people often ask me well how does one do this if you aren't in peru with these magical people how does one let go of "heavy energy"? for me the answer is .. wake up..look inside myself..go ughto i don't like this.. rush to the dictionary..ha ha.. and then let it go...stop taking it all so seriously.. really. simply let it go.. it's not mine .. what is mine is a HUGE GIANT LOVE and JOY.. and if others try to take that from me..well let them try.. it's none of my business.. my business is to be the hummingbird ... fly with my heart right on out there!!! whooo eee.. thank you my dear Q'ero family.. gracias gracias gracias.. munay. so a nice little north american ceremony is to breathe and remember that.. we are all the humminbird for real!!

Munay munay munay and muchas gracias xxx

ok and just a btw.. now i get to really see if i can walk my talk because sitting here minding my own business i was just stung by a bee. i am ALLERGIC to bees. hmm. so while i'm waiting to see if i have to stab myself with an epi pen.. i get to say.. yes sometimes people and things are dangerous.. they still cannot take away your inner being of joy..

and it is the fall equinox.. time for going within... i seem to still be breathing so phew. deep breath...

i'm letting it go!!!

iva

road to Q'ero

2011-09-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

i have been away from this blog for months. busy working on two movies!! Dreaming heaven is up and out in the world. for updates check out http://www.dreamingheaventhemovie.com/

and now we are hard at work on a movie about the Q'ero people in Peru and a message they have for the world.

the time has come to ask for support to help us get this finished so check it out below and if you'd like to pitch in a dollar or two that would be amazing and if not that's fine too.. we would love it if you shared this around and around and around... thank you!!!

check out the link below !

mucho gracias!!!

note from costa rica

2011-03-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

brimming brimming brimming with emotion. sitting on porch with no walls. houses don't need walls. just roofs and floors and netting to shield from rain. the ocean is crashing down below and a gentle breeze caresses me... for three weeks now have been woken each morning at 430 by the strange loud roar of the howler monkeys. or monos congos. and just now having the great privilege of watching the troupe making their trek across the treetops. they are completely silent except for the occasional chitter of a baby who finds a leap too hard. . they eat leaves. move in groups. are completely passive.. the loud strange roar a bluster and bravado show of defense made by the males first thing in the morning and last thing at night and rarely in between unless they are alarmed. after watching them day after day their personalities begin to emerge. some are more timid about which branch to go to next and some without hesitation leap, like flying trapeze performers, with great panache onto a tiny branch and hold on as it swings and sways under their weight. the babies' leap and then scamper chattering loudly after their mothers. some cling hard to their mother's backs and ride this way across the tree tops. every time i am reminded of the story of zephyr from the Babar stories.

this place. this costa rica really exists still... macaws caw like absurdly colored crows. they mate for life so are most often in pairs as they fly to the almond trees that line the beach. bright green parakeets dart out of the forest. an anteater stood in the road watching me make photos. a puma was seen crossing this same road the day after. and a few weeks ago a man opened his kitchen door to a jaguar hanging out . monkeys and snakes and anteaters and pelicans and big cats and gekkos and great blue butterflies. whales, dolphins and flying fish. so many species of trees in the forest they can't all be named. water springs from the ground clean enough to drink unfiltered. fruit and vegetables , too many to name, grow in abundance... i think we had a place named eden that we felt we were expelled from and yet, really, here it is...

i stood at the foot of a great matapalo tree. my hands on it's trunk, eyes closed. the energy of our earth surged so strongly up my feet and into my heart and out my head i gasped. this is life. this staggering beauty. this is life and we belong to it. how have we forgotten that? i am overcome with the staggering privilege of being here.

mucho mucho mucho gracias for this time in costa rica..

pura vida. this is what they say here. pure life. that is the spirit here. life is a privilege and it is beautiful. live it and be tranquillo. pura vida and tranquillo.

yes. tranquillo... for the very first time, it seems, since i was a child i am truly tranquillo. it is easy to be so.
may this spread out to all beings...
te amo
xxxx

Returning to the Mother...

2010-12-17T06:57:00.000-08:00

This is the first little tug on what feels like a long piece of thread…about living on the planet and our relationship to the feminine…its a big subject... and i apologize if the writing here is a little disjointed... i'm sharing ideas as they are forming... so here goes…

In my house I have a wall dedicated to Tonantzin… the mother… the savior of the Mexican people…while studying for my aromatherapy certification I wrote a paper about the essence Palo Santo and it came to me during the musing time before writing words that Palo Santo is the essence of the Mother… Palo Santo has all of the healing properties of frankincense but she is feminine not masculine. She comes from the Americas not the Middle East… she “told “ me that she is in fact the big healer for us who live in the Americas. She comes from the holy wood of Ecuador and Peru… and she is here for us … for healing… she is the Mother. She is one aspect of Tonantzin and She is inviting us home and the invitation is urgent…

Lately the question that has come to me over and over is why are so many women getting breast cancer?… why is it the women who are getting sick over and over? I kept saying to my husband… "we are the canaries in the mine… we are the canaries in the mine… " and then another piece trickled in…. we call our earth our mother… our earth is feminine. But look how the feminine is treated in most cultures of the world… how can we change how we treat our environment when we call our environment our mother if in fact we don’t really, not really, have regard for the mother? …How can the feminine aspect of the cosmos, the planet earth reside in our consciousness in a place of great reverence if that is not how we act towards the feminine off our species.?…

My husband recently returned from a trip to Nashville. He went to check on his cows and to see our friends the McCormick’s, to attend the Christmas party at the ranch, and to pick up the newest member of herondale farm, Reba, the great Pyrenees guarder of sheep. A huge white fluffy puppy! …I guess he listened to the radio a lot on the long drive home because he stood at the kitchen counter and explained to me what causes breast cancer according to a breast oncologist who herself has recovered from this disease… he said it is directly caused by the poisons in the environment… round up on the weeds…the pesticides on the corn. The hormones in the cow milk. The breast is the most sensitive organ in any human body… it is most sensitive from puberty until the woman’s first child… and during this time if it is filled with toxins these toxins help to form the aberrant cells… so we are poisoning the source of mother's milk... on every level ...

He actually thanked me, for being the crazy that I am, and sticking to my guns and driving around and around, insisting that my children eat organic food in the eighties in London. " I am so lucky to be married to you," he said… and in the quiet moment standing in our kitchen in semi darkness a profound healing went down. A shift occured from the teasing me and resisting my efforts to this simple acknowledgement of how I’ve tried to nurture our family and how possibly it could turn out to be exactly the right thing all along...

He and I got to talking about this concept of the feminine… how much regard he has for all of the aspects of this. From the Divine Mother to his gratitude to his own mother and then for me, his wife, and for his daughter… to the land he is steward of…. and it came to me how simple it is really… how quiet and gentle it can be …How if we change our thinking… our feelings about this how naturally without even thinking about it we will begin to change how we live on the earth… we wont’ have to march and protest and be angry etc… we will come from a place of genuine love and respect and naturally care and nurturing will follow.. And in the meantime I feel it is a good idea to pay close attention to the female humans of the species… our bodies are reflecting the body of the Mother… we are calling out …

These photos were taken a while ago when I first began taking pinhole photos… I had this feeling of Eden… a place of freedom and beauty…. It is the place our Mother provided… it is the place in my visions while studying with Palo Santo… this place is the place I feel also while reading The Ringing Cedar Series by Vladimir Megre.

The invitation has been issued… She is urging us to return before it’s too late… And it is up to us...

The photos are mine... the photo of the painting of Tonantzin is of the painting by Emily Grieves at the dreaming house in Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Journey to Q'ueros

2010-10-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

There are a few places left on earth it seems that are truly original. Where no cars, or machines, or electricity, or gasoline have ever been. Where the language of the people is shaped by the land and sounds like the whisper of the wind or the gurgle of a brook over stones. Where there is little shouting, when a whistle will do.

Q’ueros, high in the Andes mountains in Peru is this place. After a day of riding on dusty buses and minivans from Cusco and then two days of walking/riding horses over two 17,000 feet, perilous, mountain passes you arrive in a place where the water still runs so clear and clean you can drink from the streams, the silence is profound and the sun falls down in clear cascades of light.

You sit in a valley as the sun is setting. Off in the distance two children are herding the llamas back to their corral. There is no sound. No sound at all. You are cocooned in a silence so still it seems this must be where possibility begins. One of the children begins to sing and dance alone on the hillside with her llamas. The Q'ueros song. And in one clear stroke of feeling you absolutely understand in your very cells that we are The Children of the Sun. That it isn’t just a story, a myth, that there is an Inner sun within us, an Outer sun that we see in the sky, and The Sun behind the Sun, the Creator of it all, but that this is fact. And that we always have been the Children of the Sun. Some of us have just forgotten. We have forgotten the song. But In Q’ueros you remember.

for dylana.

2010-10-13T08:55:00.001-07:00

i had no idea you were gone. i had no idea of course that you would go so quickly. you were wonderful. young, vibrant, an incredible healer.

as i was leaving your office one day i saw that you had always been an acupuncturist. i saw you as a chinese man. right there in the flesh. i hesitated and then shyly told you as i hovered in the doorway ready to flee lest you thought i was completely crazy. you smiled and asked if the veil was always that thin for me. apparently today it is i replied. and you said, yes, all of us who have been chinese doctors before learn really quickly.

yes i said. i understand.

but really it seems that i understand nothing. it seems really that nobody knows anything, not priests or psychics or doctors or spiritual leaders. maybe we all get little glimpses of it. and some think they know but for me all of it is a tremendous perplexing, sometimes painful, alot of really wonderful, huge mystery. and the only thing we can do is live. and live right now. in peru i could actually see how heavy energy affects our bodies. almost instantaneously. so part of living for me is to work on that. really open my heart. really love. really identify and drop the heavy energy so there is more room for the refined. i was hoping to get to tell you that in person. instead i'm telling you here, perhaps, through the veil you will see.

today, i wish the veil was thinner so that i could see you once more and whisper good bye and say thank you for all that you did for jerry in his healing process and for me. i can't fathom why your time this go around was so short but i imagine that you know and it's all for some reason or another. and in the meantime i learn once again that i must treat each encounter with the understanding that life is really and truly only happening right now. there is no past. there is no future. dylana you were an absolute wizard . you still are a wizard. we will miss you so!

love

iva

finding my voice on this journey

2010-09-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

usually i feel i have to write my own words here. but today is mary oliver's birthday and this poem about, the journey, finding your voice, your own unique life, is one of my favorite ever poems. some how my whole life seems bound in these words. today i am in peru and i have lost my voice. in the beginning of this journey i dreamt that to find the light really we would have to clean ourselves thoroughly, drop heavy energy, go through the obstacles, and so the obstacles are presenting themselves and all i feel is a huge SOARING joy.

losing my voice today must have some wondrous significance and so along we go with our amigos and teachers. Lorenzo and Don Martine . and every time we do a ceremony. receive a karpai, we are able to release more heavy energy and let more light in. yesterday we learned that from the Q'uero perspective this is the key . that if all humans work on themselves alone and in ceremony and in gatherings of any kind then when they gather in larger groups the light can really burst through and shine. this is our journey on earth.

if we save ourselves we save each other.

so here is Mary Oliver's poem.

i'd love for you to follow the blog of our filming journey with the Q'uero if it interests you. www.picaflorproductions.blogspot.com

ayanchaykil/sulpayki (thank you in quechua. from one dove's heart to another. is literal translation)

xxxxx

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver. Online Source

The eagle flies with the condor...

2010-07-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

in peru i learned about this idea of the eagle flying with the condor. yesterday while digging around in my garden this came to me. the eagle flies with the condor. the north flies with the south. our minds fly with our hearts.

and the hummingbird darts through the entire fabric... spreading joy... whizzing with love.

so i am here... plodding along alot of the time... thinking thoughts like what am i doing here and what am i supposed to be doing and am i doing it this supposed thing? and then i walk into my garden and really am filled with awe.

from the beginning this idea of growing things has amazed me. it wasn't really on my list of things i thought i might ever do. (along with living on a farm) but i planted things and they grew! so my garden was a place filled with vegetables and i grew the three sisters. corn beans and squash. and i felt i should sing to them to help them grow... and then last year andy, a true and deep farmer came and planted the most spectacular vegetables all over the farm and herondale blended with his sol flower farm and my song changed... i planted native plants and medicinal herbs and mostly they are one and the same.. i mean medicine in the plants indgenious to this place... and they are exotic and wild looking many of them... much more exotic than plants europeans have imported..

in the meantime, i read about a miracle place in scotland called the findhorn community where they do more than sing.. they grow astonishing gardens by communicating with the nature spirits .

i thought well if singing makes things grow i wonder what would happen if i really determined to communicate with the nature spirits. and so i stepped into my garden and declared out loud that is what i would like to do. ok you know i figured even if this was crazy it was entertaining and then i let go of the eagle, my critical mind and all the judgements it likes to impose, and climbed onto the back of the condor with my trusty little humming bird by my side and off we soared into the unseen. i asked about everything i planted.. and when i got the feeling i was being answered i did what i was told. i planted with no logic. i chose plants i was guided to and planted them where i was told. and then this year i went into the garden as spring loosened the earth and lo and behold.. a tremendous pattern had emerged... colors all complimentary and lush... purples and reds in a plan more magnificent than my novice mind could have imagined and to top it off two huge hollyhocks planted themselves. they are the correct colors for the gardens design and even they are medicinal... it is just extraordinary... and it is true!

the eagle needs the condor and when they fly together the world becomes a magnificent place!

so last evening i began to photograph... and while i was taking the last images a young hummingbird, just growing it's colors , came to sip from the scarlet bee balm, so close to me i heard the buzzing of it's wings... it wasn't worried about me standing there in my white wings... or my little dog by my side... we just quietly went about our business, the humming bird, my camera, my dog and i...

so here are the photos taken from the condor's back in the land of the eagle.

the garden spirits showed themselves ....

so cool ...

dolphins and the hummingbird...

2010-04-17T10:23:00.001-07:00

during acupuncture... i had a vision of a dolphin swimming from some ancient place... like lemuria and joining with the hummingbird of peru and these two became one creature they merged and the joy of the dolphin flew into the sky on hummingbird wings....

the apus, the mountain spirits in the andes, were whispering and whispering and i understood this language in my heart but not my head... it was something to do with simply dropping all the ideas that did not manifest joy...

it was simple...

i feel that this was transmitted to us all on the journey during our initiations...

change the perspective... drop all thoughts... no matter what, drop thoughts that do not bring great joy...

and once again

dance...

that's all...

my iphone is my new favorite camera...

one of the photos is of the night sky and the dolphins the other is the sun coming through the trees always there for us no matter what... even if we can't see.

xxx

peru

2010-02-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

Peru keeps on dreaming through me.. I, and the others in my little group were initiated by the Q'uero elders and somehow this has taken us all and connected us molecularly to the moon, the sun, the incas, the stars, the wind, the water....
and so now the Apus, the mountain spirits, seem to be dreaming through me and although i am here in new york in the snow and rain and slush, i am also there, with Lorenzo and Martine and juliana and Lake titicaca and the sacred valley... there are secrets about living here on earth that they have kept close for a very long time and now it seems they are sharing these secrets with the world and once again life has expanded... there is so much more than I ever imagined, and you know, i imagine ALOT, and yet there is more, more than I can imagine and all I have to do it seems is stop my rational mind, open my heart, readjust my eyes and see....
over and over it came to me how simple it is really.. life loves us... all we have to do is breathe and love it back... really...
te amo!
xxx

YOU, FOR US ARE EVERYTHING

2010-01-12T09:09:00.000-08:00

FAR AWAY SO CLOSE... WIM WENDERS.

what the angel says at the beginning of this extraordinary movie...

"YOU, who we love. you do not see us. you do not hear us. you imagine us in the far distance... that we are the messengers... who bring closeness ... who are distant... we are the messengers ...we bring the light into the darkness.... we are neither the light, nor the message... we are the messenger . we are nothing, nothing. You for us are everything...

dancing with the sun.

2009-12-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

the sun shows it's face around here so rarely lately that when he arrives everything begins to dance!! so to celebrate and honor my friend sage's request the angel appeared and showed her face as well. so the dance began and lasted all the short day!!

it's a mystery.

2009-11-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

we watched shakespeare in love the other night. hadn't seen it in so long that i'd forgotten one of my favorite lines, "it's a mystery..."
everything is. it just is. even the genius of tom stoppard and marc norman working with shakespeare and capturing every bit of glorious and bawdy and romantic feeling of the bard and showing what bards they are themselves. they capture it all. the huge giant messy mystery of life!

in the full version of the oxford english dictionary there are two whole pages of a BIG book dedicated to the word.
the definitions at the outset are divided into two categories. theological and non theological. to me they are saying virtually the same thing and the not theological is more appealing so that's where i'm going...

"a hidden or secret thing; a matter unexplained or inexplicable;something beyond human comprehension. a riddle. or enigma."

and with that goes the feeling. for me it's a feeling of tremendous expansion almost as if my consciousness can actually have a party because it has found a place that my small little brain cannot explain. can't reduce to the flat, hard place of logic.

lots of things can trick me into remembering we are all from this giant mystery. and there are places on the planet that bring me right to this place. right into the mystery. two of them have been built by humans to explore this very idea. whole cities dedicated to exploring the mystery. or that's what we imagine. we don't really know because, well you know, it's a mystery...
we get to look at images or actually go to places on the earth like this and feel it. and then carry that home with us and for me everyday i try to remember that place. and more than that i try to feel it. let it take me, that crack in the sky that lets me get between here and there. where it seems the deepest creativity falls from. where real love abides. where we are from. who we are. that's what i feel.

above are two of these places. Teotihuacan in Mexico. the second largest pyramids in the world and Machu Pichu, in Peru. the last image is putacuse (yikes sorry about the spelling) the happy mountain. the mountain of joy. she is the mother and there is a little doorway in the side of her that if you let your brain slip will open for you and you can fly right out into the vast vast mystery. lovely....

The Way of the Heron.

2009-11-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

a few weeks ago my beloved friend Emily came to herondale farm from her home in teotichuacan mexico to co facilitate with me a workshop focusing on creativity. (check out her amazing blog,www.livingwithpyramids.blogspot.com), this workshop led us deep into the mystery of transformation and creativity. it was big magic. and like all things magical, the energy began swirling days before emily even arrived. the workshop centered around the grace and peacefulness of the heron spirit. days after the workshop i found this passage in a book called, Native New Yorkers:

"the Lenape, as part of the Algonquin world, were inheritors of what Eunice Bauman Nelson, an elder of the Penobscot tribe has called 'The Way of the Heron.' in the lenape the translation would be Aaney Talika. It is the way of the peacemaker, and it is a great tradition through out the Algonquin world.... the Lenape were the Grandfathers, the elder statesmen of the realm."
Evan T. Pritchard
Native New Yorkers. the legacy of the algonquin people of new york.

so it seems the land once again spoke to us. leading us deep into our own hearts and deep into the heart of this place. and perhaps we have all been called to "the way of the peace maker."

THE ANGEL OAK

2009-09-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the south, South Carolina for the most part, but we were wanderers across that state. back and forth from Columbia to Bennetsville we roamed. but for five blissful years we settled in Charleston and that place buried itself under my skin, left its imprint permanently. I loved that place so much it still pulls me. The smell of the marsh. The hot wet air. The pelicans loping across the sky. And a 1,500 year old tree called the Angel Oak out on John’s Island. A few years ago I guess I just needed to answer that pull and so I began writing out the memory. It turned into to fiction holding all the feelings of that place.
I wrote about two ghosts who were bound up with each other on earth and then stayed bound up when they turned to spirit and a tree called the Angel Oak.
Here is a little snippet from that story.

"I went down in the Valley one day, I heard the angel singing."
Inez held Hopes hand, singing as she wove with her through the tree’s arcing limbs, the two wraiths falling like sunlight through the leaves of the Angel Oak. Hope was frightened. She had never bargained on flying being part of her job description. She wondered how Inez had mastered this flying floating thing as if she’d always known that one day she would soar. Inez ignored her protestations and showed her where to alight, high in the tree, where the view was good.

I don’t like heights, Hope said.
The tallest tree in paradise, the Christians call the tree of life, Inez sang. And then she turned to Hope. Come on, sing with me, she said. Sunday’s dawning soon.
We used to come here all the time, Inez. I love this tree, is this why you brought me here?
Just sing.
I don’t know this song.
The spirits will come.
Spirits?
Inez giggled a wheezy sound through her nose.
Spirit’s other than the two we be.
And when she saw the confusion on Hopes face she added.
If you hadda looked closely if you ever came on Saturday night you would have seen Angels, floating brightly above the water, carrying spirits along on their wings, bringing them back to earth, back to the tree, to sing. Ain’t you never seen them?
No I don’t believe I ever saw that, Inez. Hope smiled a knowing smile. A smirk really.
You don’t believe me?
I didn’t say that.
Humph. Well just wait. You’ll see.
Shadows began flitting along the bent boughs. Shadows arriving and singing songs so sad the wind began to moan. And there were hundreds of them materializing from shadow to shape until finally the Angel Oak was entirely covered with spirits. Their voices rang across the sky, hard to hear, easily mistaken for the wind, or birds or some strange whirring insects that rattled just before dawn. They sang all the songs at once. Nobody knows the trouble I seen. Nobody knows my sorrow, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, You got to walk that lonesome valley, Swing low sweet chariot, there is a balm in Gilead, Wade in the water,. Roll over Jordon. I’m going home all swelling from the python like branches of the ancient tree..
Who are these people? Hope whispered.
My ancestors.
Have they always come here?
Yes, for a long long time.
Why could I never see them before?
Were you looking?
I don’t guess I was.
You got to look to the past to remember your future, Inez said.
Hope began to quake.
I don’t wanna be left behind when the saints go marching in.
A small girl fluttered down and settled next to Hope. She clutched onto Hope’s arm and looked up at her, her brown eyes wide and sad.
Where’s my Mama at? she said.
I don’t know sugar. Hope turned to Inez, What is this child doing here by herself?
Where’s her mother?
Inez shrugged and began to clap her hands with the others as they sang.
The tallest tree in Paradise, the Christians call the tree of life.
Well don’t you worry, Hope said to the child, you stay with me until we find your mama.
She can’t do that, Inez said. You’re too late.
What do you mean?
Just then, a woman, alive on the earth, wandered under the tree and stood with her neck craned, peering up into the branches draped with spirits and Spanish moss.
Isn’t that the bird woman? Hope whispered.
Yes, Althea can see us. Not many can. She has the call. Inez waved.
Turkey buzzard on its way, someone shouted down to Althea.
Althea nodded her head. Too bad, she muttered and wandered away.
What’s that mean?
Inez just tsked her teeth and shook her head. Mm-mm-mm. She said. while the others sang that Paul and Silas bound in jail sing God’s praise both night and day. hallelujah...

-from I Heard The Angel Singing. Iva Peele

a few weeks ago i took my youngest son to Charleston. we drove out to see the Angel Oak. He was as mesmerized as i've spent a lifetime being. The ancient old tree still growing and holding up our memories for 1500 years has seen more than any than we can imagine. A thousand years before the Europeans came to this place and brought with them people they’d stolen from Africa, this tree was watching the original people go about their lives. Century after century it’s been aborbing it all. all the secrets and mysteries of this place held inside it's trunk and stretched out limbs...

teepee

2009-06-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

may

2009-05-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

last year around this time i wrote about my favorite tree. a tree that signals the start of spring and the bursting forth of life.
this year an angel hovered under the white blossoms at sunset.

what my friend Roberto said.

2009-04-12T14:59:00.001-07:00

"what's going on at this farm, what we are doing here, is going to amaze us because the earth, too, feels alone. the earth feels the separation from us as keenly as we feel loneliness."
-Roberto Luna

and now we are all, Jerry, Andy, roberto and i, along with the white family, we are all making a conscious concerted effort to return our full attention here and already it feels different.

we are returning to her. more deeply even than raising animals and farming. we are all talking with her and sending blessings every day. we have built a medicine wheel and made offerings and are listening to her... a give and take...

and as a result, there is a kind of opening.
a kind of conversation back and forth, you can hear the whispers under the leaves rustling. little flashes of light here and there in the woods as if the woods are revealing their dreaming
it is a love affair...

and after all my resisting i begin to understand that somehow i belong here. i was born only 15 miles from here and my ancestors farmed only twenty miles from here over a hundred years ago. so although i grew up in the south and consider that slow warm place my roots perhaps there are roots here i had never considered.
have i found my way home?
how mysterious.

as i wrote these words a red tailed hawk flew close to the window.

how fitting to contemplate on a blustery easter sunday.
a new beginning.

te amos te amos most intriguing life.

xx

Dreaming summer and The Book of Dreams

2009-04-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

THE Book of Dreams is my artist statement for this pinhole portfolio, many of the images are here in my blog so it seems appropriate to post. i'm also putting it here today for Andy. he will understand why i think... certainly the land speaks to him often and more intricately than it speaks to me because he spends his life working with it, growing beautiful things...
so keep dreaming Andy. You are awesome and amazing!!
xx
iva

The Book of Dreams
Artist Statement
I live on a farm in a remote pocket of New York’s Hudson valley. I wander the fields for hours and often for as many hours there is no human conversation. At first, I believed myself to be alone. I believed myself to be lonely. In fact I often used to find myself shouting out to the Drowned Land Swamp.

“I am lonely. I am lonely.”

And much to my surprise the swamp had a reply.

“ Stop. Look. Listen. Learn the summer. Learn the winter. Underneath the silence you will hear the land humming quietly. We are dreaming here under the snow. Under the saw grass and cattails. We are dreaming here. Come back to these places over and over again and we will teach you to dream with us.”

And so this is what I do. I dream this place. There are moments of great joy. Great beauty and then, inexplicably, there will be a sudden rush of overwhelming fear. It is not rational. It is not an intellectual exercise. It is a dreaming between the beating of my heart and the sudden flight of the heron loping overhead. It is a dreaming with some unfathomable creatures. Wearing wings. Wearing masks and befriending crows. They whisper to me and I am a child again. Unfettered and free.

I set up my camera. Literally a large format wooden box with a pinhole for a lens. I slip in a sheet of film and begin to dance the dreams. The dreams of a place. Light falls onto the film. The film drinks the light and images form and the pictures are made. I am never entirely sure what pictures will come. I print the images and the dance continues. When another person views the images they become part of the dream . Their own dream in their own place.
1500 years ago in Mexico the Toltec people talked of dreaming heaven on earth. It was the human job to realign our hearts with God by dreaming heaven here. An anonymous Aztec poet later wrote
"These Toltec’s were very wise,
It was their custom to converse with their own hearts….
They created a whole system,
The book of dreams…"

This work is my Book of Dreams.

today it is cold and there is snow. it is april but winter is holding on tight. it takes a fierce determination on my part, to keep listening and working with a place when it snows in april, but i learned with my heart in peru that even if we cannot see the sun, it is always there, in the heavens and in our hearts because we are of it. we are of the earth and of the sun and of the cosmos, the great mystery, we are it... and so now while the snow is still coming down, and i live in this place on earth in my human body, i am dreaming summer... this dreaming began two days ago when the sun actually came out from behind the gray and brought with it a hint of warmth. a taste of things to come. the birds burst into a delirium of song. I stayed outside as long as i could, i hauled my camera out with me. and i am learning, i am learning, slowly but still learning, to live with a place, no matter what...

and soon my beloved crab apple tree will be bursting with raucous blooms. in the meantime, my angel and i are dreaming dreaming dreaming summer....

xx

learning from the Apus and Pachamama

2009-03-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

i don't have many words just yet. something happened up there in the andes and i'm not really sure what it was. i know that the Apus are real. (Apus - light being that exists within special mountains. these spirits live in both the middle and upper worlds and can intercede for humanity. they are also referred to as Apukunas- Jorge Louis Delgado, Andean Awakening)

i know that my perception has utterly shifted. the Apus are great masters and great teachers. and so is our mother, the earth, the Mamapacha and her cosmic counterpart Pachamama.

i know that the little boy i quoted back in feb in my blog post from hawaii talking about everything being a great and tremendous mystery was more correct than i can even begin to imagine. and after this i know nothing... except i feel that

i love Peru. i love Peru. my heart felt completely at home. i could fly. i could hear the earth sing. now the task is to bring this home. to feel everything living everywhere. to choose light over dark by understanding the dark and walking firmly into the light... living from the center that is only light... instead of dancing on the periphery of life as Jorge says.

in the meantime here are the photos. the color image is from the beach in lima taken with the surfing angels.

te amo te amo peru.

muchos gracias!!!

xxx

Wild Angels

2009-03-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

lately Martin Sexton's music is what i can't get enough of. i have been listening to him over and over. searching for something perhaps or maybe just living in his voice and words and then there it was. the song wild angels. "we are wild Angels and we are free, " he sang and i thought. yes!! that's it.

this is why the Angels have come to me. Wild Angels explains it all. Martin Sexton is singing my photos. he is singing my heart. and that's the magic of music.

so here are more from hawaii and underneath the photos i have posted the lyrics to the song. i wish i could put his incredible voice. the music. the music is what it's about but i don't know how to do this here. i hope that anyone who reads this and is inspired will seek it out for themselves.

in the meantime. here are the dreams... the first one is my dearest Marena. for whom i have total and complete love. the te amo kind.

xxx

Wild Angels

Sayulita Dreaming

2009-02-28T14:58:00.000-08:00

hawaii dreamtime.

2009-02-06T09:23:00.000-08:00

Hawaii

2009-01-20T14:33:00.000-08:00

Perhaps a land of angels…

Hawaii, the last day of this adventure with Beth, my dearest friend in the entire world. It has been a trip of omens and portents and is ending on the day that Barack Obama from Hawaii, just became President Obama. A new beginning. A new age…

An inner voice has led me all over this island. Stop here. Go there. Go to Hawi, to Star light crystal shop. There are crystals there for you. Right now. Then go to see the whales. And so we did. And the whales came right to us. So for over an hour we floated in a little rubber boat alongside a mama whale and her calf and a male escort, That’s what they call these males who take it upon themselves to protect the mother and baby . The whale's thoughts felt long and deep and sloooow as the mother and calf rose and dove close enough to touch.

A pod of dolphins swam nearby. They hurried through the waves. Cheerfully chanting. We’re busy busy busy, no time to play today …

High above loomed the snow capped peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The male and Female volcanoes. Pyramids that literally create the earth. All around the earth is new. Every landscape encapsulated on this island. Madame Pele watching over it all. Humbling us. Beth and me. Filling us with gratitude.

As the days passed the inner voice, or perhaps it was an angel sent by Madame Pele, became stronger, telling me to get up from the beach on the kona coast and drive to hawi. To the Pololu Valley Lookout, where you descend into a steep v shaped ravine. Into the womb of the mother. Meditate here the voice told me. But a group of young men with big dogs emerged from a stand of trees and I became afraid. The voice urged me on and I argued. Not trusting. They might hurt me. It’s late in the afternoon. Hardly anyone is here.

Sit down. Take out the crystal and meditate with it, here, while the sun sinks closer to the ocean. The voice was having none of my feeble protestations.

This better be real I muttered. Imaging all kinds of gruesome things.

I was pulled up short.

And I understood that I could not open my heart because it was closed with fear.

So I sat. Still afraid but deciding to trust. Not really properly but I sat and closed my eyes and then opened them. Glancing around. A woman who’d been sitting far down the beach had come nearer to me. She was circling around me. I imagined she watched me. I closed my eyes… breathe breathe...let go of thoughts ... the fear came.. my eyes popped open... The woman, had now moved round to the other side of me quite close and was sitting with her legs crossed, her palms up and a big stick across her lap, deep in meditation.

She is protecting you. Now close your eyes.
And so I did. I held the crystal. I closed my eyes.

The voice whispered, riding above the roar of the waves and riding them in with a soft shushing across the black sand.

It’s about love. That’s all it is. The Te amo kind.
The crystal is charged with love.

I opened my eyes. Sun hit bright drops on the water. The cliffs rose straight from the black sand. Glorious. Finally I ambled back towards the path. Taking pictures as I went. And Of course the woman was close behind me. She was from India or Sri Lanka. A man accompanied her now. She hurried to catch up with me. I wasn’t imaging this. She smiled at me. I smiled at her. She pointed to the trees where the boys had come from. It’s lovely up there she said.
Yes I said. Not telling her I’d run away in fear.

The husband butted in. He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t want her talking to a stranger really, he said hello and then pulled her away, but she caught my eyes with hers and looked at me for a long time. Smiling and nodding before she hurried off.

Last night the Serpent of Light, (a book my friend Lee, suggested I read.) ended with a chapter about the Waitaha Maori people and how they practiced a kind of dreaming from the heart and how the new age was about love. They believe we as a species come from whales and dolphins. These people are related to Hawaii. And then this morning at about 7am Hawaii time the poet Elizabeth Alexander read her poem for President Obama’a inauguration, Praise song for the day

And it ends

“What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

IN today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

ON the brink, on the brim, on the cusp--- praise song for walking forward in that light."

Elizabeth Alexander.

And so here we are. The dots beginning to connect. Beth and I still adventuring around together. feeling life and loving everything. The te amo kind.
life is amazing! Perhaps that is so.

xxx

hawaii

2009-01-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

Hawaii is big magic for me. The mystery is palpable here. The air is soft. It rolls like a woman. Curves everywhere. No straight lines.
The land is new. Literally. Surging straight from the center of the earth it is still forming here. It is the child of the mother. Driftwood like whale bones and the angel is here too it seems…

And last night, My friend tom sent me the most amazing mp3. It seems so appropriate to receive this here.

A child is talking. A boy of eight or nine maybe and this is part of what he says…

“Nobody … not your brother or sister or mother or father … not even the president or kings and queens, NOBODY knows what a single thing is. It is a great and wonderful mystery to all of us. That anything IS or that we ARE. And whether somebody says I don’t know how anything came to be or somebody says God made everything. They are simply pointing to the feeling of the mystery. Of how everything is but nobody knows what it really is or how it came to be.

As long as we go on feeling this mystery we feel free and full and happy and we feel and act full and free and happy to others.

This is the secret to being happy. This is from the time you are small to the time you are old. If you will remember every day to feel the mystery and if you will remember to feel that you are more than what you look like and if you will remember to be the mystery itself then you will be happy.
Every day…
And all kinds of wonderful happenings will come up for you.
You will always help and love others even those who forget to be happy and are even trying to make you forget the mystery… I hope you will remember to feel the mystery everyday as long as you are awake forever…”

It seems there is not one second of forgetting to remember the mystery and that we are that. And I feel full and free and happy. I asked Madam Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, if I could have permission to take pictures here. Here is one of the images that came.
A monkey pod tree in Hiilo.

So remember to feel the mystery. And feel full and free and HAPPY.
Maholo.
Xx

Learning to Dream Winter

2008-12-19T09:36:00.000-08:00

I went out with my camera to the place where the big trees stand. the largest one, an ancient oak, stood sentry. he looked at me sternly. i stood before him for a long while, waiting. deep scars were etched in the bark where barbed wire had grown thick into him. my feet started to get numb with cold, i was a little frightened, he was so still and stern.

i whispered, asking permission to use my camera. a wind rustled into the silence. a winter spirit whispered in my ear," Look closely… Listen intently. Underneath the silence you will hear the land humming quietly. We are dreaming here under the snow. Look… come back... over and over again to this place and you will learn to dream with us… we will show you the secrets the humans are forgetting... we will show you how to dream winter..."

as if in answer another old spiritual from childhood wound through my mind.

…Just when I thought my soul was lost
I heard the angels singing.
My dungeon was shook.. my chains dropped off
I heard the angels sing.
What do you reckon the angels said?
Your sins are forgiven and your soul is free….

And there under the bow of the ancient one stood the angel… with her crow flapping overhead...
she beckoned and i followed and this is what i found....

dreams of flying

2008-12-15T11:16:00.000-08:00

last night i dreamt of travel. of flying. of wandering here and there. it's winter on the farm. while i was away there was a stupendous ice storm. have not gotten up to the places where the ice lingers because the light has been so murky. my wings are waiting. so in the meantime i am going to try and learn the winter. learn to live gracefully with the gray. so far have not figured out how to do that. so far my learning leads me to flying. and that will have to do for now.

Basho

2008-12-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

staying among flowers

from beginning to end

about twenty days

go naked

one needs to wear more clothes

in February's storm

discovered.

2008-11-29T16:43:00.000-08:00

oops!

The visit

2008-11-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

this time the angel flew out of the dawn
on wings of wind
or maybe not an angel
but icarus descending
unscathed this time
either way
all wrapped in light
with a raven
on the arm....

the visit was brief barely a flicker as the sun
burned through the mist,
and after it was gone
i sang a song from childhood

i got wings... you got wings... all god's children got wings....

We chose the light!

2008-11-05T15:54:00.000-08:00

it is the day after the election and i have no words.

last night i watched the results with my family and friends.

as the results began to roll in and it was clear pretty fast what was happening, my cousin, Jenny, and my daughter, Rosie and I lost our minds. we simply lost our minds and became a team of pure unbridled emotion. we alternately ran up and down the length of the barn whooping and hollering and then stood riveted with tears streaming down our faces.

and today i keep whispering to myself, my god, it really happened, America woke up and emerged from the dank cave we've been inhabiting and chose the light!! It seems we have decided to change what we believe in and the change is astounding!!

here is the morning i found today, november the 5th 2008, the day after we elected Barack Hussein Obama to be our next President!!!

and check out my friend john's blog. his photos of last night are just really really incredible! http://jrnelsonphoto.blogspot.com/2008/11/history.html
or my snaps under blogs to check out on the right hand side here.
xx

What we believe

2008-10-31T09:50:00.000-07:00

about a week ago my friend Jay told me a fascinating story. his uncle had to have his pacemaker replaced and while the uncle was on the operating table he died for about twenty minutes or so. this happened twice.

jay rushed to his uncle's bedside when he was completely back in this world and asked him what had happened.

"nothing his uncle said. nothing at all. there was just black."

"oh," jay said, "wow, nothing at all? how disappointing. "

"yeah, it was disappointing, there was no white light, no angels, my father was not waiting for me, there was just blackness and these two mayan indians standing next to me telling me not to answer this kid that was calling me to come over to him. he was the next door neighbor who had commtitted suicide a while back and he was there, sitting on a fence, calling me to come over to him, and the mayan indians, two men, kept telling me to ignore him and not to go to him. finally the kid turned around and his face was half gone. it was gruesome and sad. the indians told me to turn away, that he was dead and it was not my time."

Jay was astonished. and we who were listening to the story were astonished and blown away. funny version of nothing, i thought. And i have been ruminating on this ever since. We have these amazing, inexplicable brains, they process thought, emotion, sensations and then make stories so that we can make sense of things and we believe our stories so completely it seems we don't let ourselves open to new ideas even in the in between world. that is wild!!

when the priest came into the hospital room jay's uncle really was mad with him. he accused him of lying to him all these years. there is no after life etc etc..

Jonah Lehrer, in his excellent book, Proust was a Neuroscientist, explains similar phenomena over and over again in essays about art and the science of the brain. Here, in an essay about Cezanne, he shows us how Cezanne's paintings, the dabs of color and thin lines depict what the eyes really see, the mind fills in the rest. he explains the subjectivity of sight scientifically.....

"as Cezanne understood, seeing is imagining. the problem is that there is no way to quantify what we think we see....the shocking fact is that sight is like art. What we see is not real. It has been bent to fit our canvas which is the brain. When we open our eyes, we enter into an illusory world, a scene broken apart by the retina and re-created by the cortex.... It is art, and not science, that is the means by which we express what we see on the inside. The painting, in this respect is closest to reality. It is what gets us closest to experience..."

-PROUST WAS A NERUOSCIENTIST. Johan lehrer. pgs 112-119.

this book is so fascinating. i highly recommend it. he shows how the "human brain has been designed to believe itself.." pg 70.

it seems that actually we really have no idea what exists and what doesn't because we can only see what we believe in. Clearly we have made agreements in society about what we are seeing but even that is subjective. try and describe a shade of red to someone and get them to point out that exact color. almost impossible. we agree on red but the shades and variations slip past the agreement.

so maybe that's why i'm making these images with angels all wrapped in light. i'm trying to push the edges of what i can see. what i believe. and they are how i see. my interpretation of how i see. what i believe. i'm trying to give my own dream the slip.

here are the images. it's subjective. make of them what you will. oh and talk about subjective, an acquaintance was visiting the other day and she said to me, "oh but you do all this superimposing in photoshop etc.." i was dismayed.

so for the record. these are shot with a pinhole camera on polaroid film and minimally burned, dodged, toned in photoshop. less than i would have done in a dark room. that's the truth, no matter what you believe!

xx
iva

Light and the cosmos

2008-10-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

I was given a huge gift the other day.

I was mooning around in my office. Fretting and imagining a terribly bleak future and biting my nails and then trying to meditate and be in the now . that wasn’t working , my imagination was really too good. I was totally caught in the drama of falling markets, impossible to pay mortgages, chastising myself for not being prepared, not having my ducks all in a row. This was getting bad, silly, and on top of that totally perplexing. I actually have never spent so much time fretting over things like this. So then I had to begin to examine why I was doing what I was doing. Auggh. More hell. More devilish gremlins dancing around in my silly mind. I sighed. I glanced out of the window.

The light was gorgeous. I grabbed my camera and ran outside and discovered a light rain falling through the late afternoon light. The sun burst all light and gold through the dark clouds. There must be a rainbow I thought but couldn’t see it so I started playing with the light and the way it came through the left over cosmos in my garden and forgot all about the future and the nail biting.

A pure shot of exuberance rushed through me. All that existed was exquisite beauty. So simple. And free. All of the worry fell away. All the thinking. And I just was with my camera and the incredible light.

Frinally, humming to myself, I slung my camera over my shoulder and walked over the hill towards home, and there was the rainbow. A shocking streak of color arching down to earth. I was so excited I started jumping up and down and shouting thank you! thank you! thank you! ( okay I do these things sometimes usually when no one is looking but now I’ve blown my cover. ) I snapped my last pictures and then went home. No more gloom. Just pure pure joy.

Now several days later and the sky is leaden and the gremlins are lurking I am picturing the light and the cosmos and trying to remember that this feeling of joy can always be around the next corner waiting for me to get out of my head. I just have to open my eyes and see.

and when that doesn't work the images help a lot.
so here they are.

Thank you rainbow maker!

once again Te Amo, Te Amo, Te Amo
Xx

drinking from the river lethe

2008-09-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

am finding what i'm getting to and faster than i thought i would. must be a mind addled by lyme's disease, let's me slip away from the temporal plain more easily. and i find myself wandering about with odd images, angels in all forms, and the sun cooperating. and this passage from The Republic appearing just when i needed it.

"...all the souls had now chosen their lives...they marched on in a scorching heat to the plain of forgetfulness, which was a barren waste, destitute of trees and verdure; and then towards evening they encamped by the river of Unmindfulness, whose water no vessel can hold; of this they were all obliged to drink a certain quantity, and those who were not saved by wisdom drank more than was necessary; and each one as he drank forgot all about all things....about the middle of the night there was a thunderstorm and earthquake and then in an instant they were sent upwards in all manner of ways to their birth, like stars shooting..."

The Republic -Plato- Jowett translation

and here we land our wings in tatters, our faces confused, half angel half human, or rather, all angel dreaming to be human, wandering about, trying to trick away the effects of the forgetful water and remember who we are. remembering in our sleeping dreams but brushing them away until something jogs our memory and little by little the light is let in.

so here are the pictures that came, the drink from the river and the landing on earth. or something like that, i think words get in the way from now on. so whatever, it certainly is the most fun in this world to wander around a farm with angel wings and a pinhole camera! and i seem to be moving backwards so the last photos i posted would come after these. it's not linear so there we go.

xxx

on duty angels

2008-09-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Off Duty Angel

2008-09-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

The ideas for these images are coming to me in bits and pieces and then they emerge, seemingly, of their own volition.

This is what I know. The opera singer has stayed with me. he planted a seed that seems to have taken root. The idea that maybe he was only there in my reality. Or I should say jerry’s and my reality as we shared the experience. That maybe my lovely little opera singer was an angel of sorts. hmm. well what is an angel exactly?

The first piece of the idea urged me to find some angel wings and so I did and put them away not really knowing what I would do with them. Maybe use them with models… try to find a way not to be too trite with them. explore this idea of an angel appearing in an unexpected fashion.

yesterday the early morning light was so stunning it pulled me from my bed. i grabbed the wings and my camera and these are the images that came.

In the meantime life has been a wild ride. wild enough to have me gripped by some un-namable fear in the middle of the night and so i spend my time floating with the shadows across the ceiling, watching the curtains billow in the wind and talking to myself rather than sleeping. trying to shake it. to find consolation.

then this morning i opened my email and found Paulo Coelho's newsletter. it announced that now it is permissible to download texts and use them and so off i went to see what i could find and here it is the first one i came upon.

When angels talk by paulo coelho
Nobody is courageous all the time. The unknown is a constant challenge, and being afraid is part of the journey.

What to do? Talk to yourself. Talk alone. Talk to yourself even if others think you have gone crazy. As we talk, an inner force gives us the security to overcome the obstacles that need to be surmounted. We learn lessons from the defeats that we are bound to suffer. And we prepare ourselves for the many victories that will be part of our life.

And just between you and me, those who have this habit (and I’m one of them) know that they never talk alone: the guardian angel is there, listening and helping us to reflect. - paulo coelho

well, that's something to think about. in the meantime the angel looks tired obviously she doesn't get to sleep either. too busy listening to the midnight mitote in my head. (mitote is the toltec name for the thousand voice blabber that goes on in your head vying for your attention)

perhaps this is why one of the angels looks a bit scary. she's saying enough already. be in the moment. sleep at night. remember all the enthusiastic prattling about living and loving as much as you can!

so life is wild both high and low and in the meantime here are the wings i've dusted off and i'm excited to see where they will take me.

another look

2008-09-13T08:13:00.000-07:00

i'm thinking about what i wrote yesterday. to keep the idea of singing dancing living all i can live with all the love and compassion i can and then something else. something bigger all at once.
be in this world and not of it, kind of thing.
these are the feelings i've been tumbling around with and then this morning i picked up
The art of Dreaming, by Carlos Castaneda and found this:

"I want Freedom. Freedom to retain my awareness and yet disappear into the vastness."

and that's part of it. part of this inarticulable idea i'm working with. in the meantime
here are some images. they might get at it better than words. maybe. and if not, that's okay too.

To live's to Fly

2008-09-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

Because you just never know what’s going to happen next. Flying from Montana and the sweetest wedding imaginable to the bedside of my dearest person on the planet.
Because there is no controlling anything, might as well spread my wings and leap. Because in the end for me there really is only one purpose in being here and that’s to live with all the grace and love I can fit into my small body. My wild heart.
And that can be a wild crazy ride. It can take my breath away. It can hurt deep down hurt and then be so sweet it makes my teeth ache. And then I just dance. I mean standing in the kitchen, I have to dance and sing and just go on and live and love deeply and fiercely. And look at this place we’ve been given to learn about all of this. It’s a wild fierce beautiful planet we get to work out our wild hearts with.

And Townes Van Zandt wrote this and it’s a good answer it seems.

To live's to fly
All low and high
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes.

So shake the dust off of your wings
And the tears out of your eyes.

And I say this. I love you beth. I love you so!!!
Xxx

the greatest adventure

2008-08-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was our 25th wedding anniversary. It was silver. That is the tradition apparently. Somehow in this lifetime I missed the instruction book. I am the one who forgets anniversaries. And so jerry began reminding me about this event several months ago. The conversation went something like this.

Twenty-five years. August 27th. It’s a big deal. A meaningful look would come darting my way. A warning. This is not something to forget.
I know it is. Of course I won’t forget!!
Should we have a party?
Okay if that’s what you want.
We are supposed to have a party.
Okay. But I don’t really like parties. I mean if we have the people we really love then that will be a dinner not a party.
Disgruntled sigh from jerry’s corner
Okay, I said again, obviously something very wrong with me. We will have the party.
But then in a tiny whiny voice I added. Why do people whom we hardly know care about our wedding anniversary? Do we have to do that?
It turns out no; we don’t have to do that. We are having a dinner with our dearest friends and family who are close enough to come. It’s truly wonderful and here’s the thing.

I was never the girl who planned my wedding. Who dreamed of the dress and the house to follow. I dreamed of wandering and adventure. I dreamed of no fixed abode. Of no fixed man. There were so many cute ones. Why settle on one. I dreamed about the adventure of life and if there was someone with me then how grand. And then I met jerry. In England, and he just seemed cuter than the rest. We went to Sicily. We had such a grand time. The dream of adventure seemed to pale without him, and so how startling that I was the one who got myself married, to a guy from England, when I was 24. And then immediately began popping out these most precious people who were my children. I mean, what a thought. When I was 30 with two babies I realized it was not a thought but my life. I woke up with a start. I had given up adventure for domesticity. Huh. Not my plan at all.

So waking up, or what I thought of as waking up, can be a bit uncomfortable for those around you. They are all still sleepy and woozy and cozy in the former dream. They usually aren’t so keen for one person in the pod to start rearranging the covers and finally springing from the bed altogether and declaring that the light has dawned and it was time for us all to wake up! Snap snap!! But Jerry, looked at me silently, and slowly climbed out of his dream and said. Okay. Now what. Always. Every time.
No matter what gauntlet I have thrown down. He has calmly picked it up. Silently but sweetly shown me to be wrong over and over again in my assumptions about love and that the unruly wildness at the heart of me does not have to be tamed in order to love.

So really this is what I come to. I am married to the most extraordinary man. Some consciousness greater than my understanding obviously gave me guidance. I have been a ruthless rearranger of the covers. I have behaved in ways that would have caused almost every other person I have ever met to abandon this dream of living with me a long time ago. But jerry peele has stayed. He has stuck true to his word. He has been the most loyal and abiding friend.
We have moved from London, to Bermuda, to NYC to a farm in ancramdale and millions of houses in between. And just as many incarnations of ourselves.
He has loved me through thick and thin. And because of him I have learned that the great adventure I thought I was searching for has always been right here. The great adventure is love.
I suppose I go on and on about unconditional love. Te ammo. And here it is.
Wow.
I am humbled with gratitude.
Happy anniversary, jerry peele
Te amo truly. Te amo te amo.
Your errant and untraditional little wife
iva
Xxx

slideshow of teo images

2008-08-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

this just seems like fun to me, to add a slide show of the photos from mexico and so here they are.

flying from one dream to another.

2008-08-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

pyramid of the moon at first light
spirit dog

the church during fiesta
first light on pyramid of the sun.

Last night i returned from a ten day trip to mexico.

in mexico i was on a journey inside a journey, led by my friend lee and staying at his vision of a of perfection which he has brought to life, called the dreaming house.

the dreaming house sits at the foot of the pyramids, teotihuacan, in the village of san sebastian. the dreaming house is beyond a dream come true and the village is small and the pyramids, remind you of the dream of heaven on earth. spending ten days there on a journey is perfection in every way possible and flying back home can be startling. it actually has a name, this disorientation. it's called re- entry. because sometimes the bumping back to your reality can be hard. but this time that wasn't so. a total stranger cushioned my landing.

here is the story. a lot of words, but i hope you can get the image.

i arrived at night and jerry picked me up in newark, new jersey. we stopped for food at a rest stop on highway 87 before driving back up to the farm. the rest stop was packed with people. and somehow the burger king and the dunkin' donuts and s'baro's pizza had all run out of food. this was a new experience but i was floating and still in my teo dream and so all these throngs of people flowed under the fluorescent lights, with no expression on their faces or looking grumpy about the long lines and scant amount of food. a land of the zombies kind of thing. i stood in wonder with my mouth forming a little O and watched and marveled as if i was in a 3d movie and the world of people flowed past like a river. jerry stood close beside me as if i might actually begin to float away or something.

we settled on a slice of pizza and got into the line. i began to giggle and kind of dance around. well sort of a cringing dancing laughing kind of thing about how the food was inedible anyway but i was hungry and there wasn't very much food and i didn't really care. i was watching my little zombie movie. all glowy and laughing and detached.

"my god, we are in america, and no where has it's usual abundance of inedible food, on the day i have decided to eat what ever i can get. hee hee. this is funny. "

i laughed. jerry laughed.

and a stout little man, with a balding head and glasses piped up from behind us in the line.

"i'm watching the music of your conversation."

i turned to him in wonder.

how amazing! one of the extra's in my movie was engaging me in conversation!

"what do you mean?"

"i watch people and their body language and how they speak is like music."

"oh i love that. how we move and speak is music." i said and probably did some dorky thing like clap my hands together as i responded.

well he wasn't done with us, and the pizza wasn't ready and so we began to chat. he was a charming man, funny ideas about this and that and inside i was thinking what a brilliant character to begin speaking in my 3 d movie of the rest stop on 87 north. and so to keep the conversation going, i asked him what he did. he said he was an opera singer.

"my teacher was pavaroti's understudy. i'm just an amateur, but i know what i'm doing."

"wow that's cool. that's why you see music everywhere!"

he smiled. and then he stepped in closer so his face was right in mine and he opened his mouth and began to sing!! big!! he sang big!! in a beautiful opera voice just for me, in the line for sbaro's pizza in the rest stop on highway 87, in new jersey!! this is true!! i swear swear swear!!

a rotund little opera singer began singing an aria just for me. . singing me back into to the dream of america.

i think the world may have stopped. i'm not sure. but his song gathered gusto. he began moving his arms, gesturing towards jerry as he sang,

"she is the woman of your dreams...." and jerry, because he returned from teo less than a week ago, replied "that's true." my movie was rocking now.

the opera singers voice gathered strength again and rose above the crowds and hovered around the awful lighting and fell down on the throngs of sad looking faces. a fat little man doling out pure joy.

jerry and i stood riveted , hardly daring to breathe, in case he turned out to be an apparition and vanished. but he was in the flesh and when he finished the song he told me to kiss jerry and so that is what i did.

now that for sure is love. for the opera singer and my husband.

the te amo kind.

perhaps the rest of my life can rest in that utterly divine scene in front of the glass counter of the s'baro's booth.

we oohed and ahhed and told him how wonderful he was and gathered our cheese pizza slices and floated back to the car.

i didn't ask his name and so for the opera man in the rest stop in new jersey, this is for you, where ever you are.

te amo. te amo.

thank you so much for flying me from one dream of heaven on earth back to america and showing me that even a grimy rest stop can be a little piece of heaven if you look at it that way. I have laughed all day. i am still laughing with wonder and joy.

thank you my opera singing stranger!!!! and thank you lee and emily and sage and all of you who were in teo with me, thank you for everything, all beyond words!!

xxx

Peace like a River

2008-07-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes this yearning starts up in the summer. A yearning for the south, where I grew up. A yearning for the marsh outside of Charleston where my brother and my friend Happy Erwin and I spent hours wandering shirtless and barefoot. Sinking in the marsh mud. Talking in hushed tones about how the crabs would eat you if you sank too deep. Eat out your eyeballs. We slapped at mosquitoes and watched the pelicans lope across the sky. I loved the cabbage stink smell of the mud at low tide and walking up to the 7/eleven, covered in mud and bites, to get an icee. Past the graveyard and the haunted house. It seemed in every moment there was magic. It dripped down from the moss and rose out of the marsh. Sometimes our mother took us out to the Angel Oak on John’s Island. That tree is 1300 years old, her branches long as octopus tentacles reaching up to heaven and snaking yards and yards along the ground. if you sat under that old tree and listened real close you could hear the angels sing.

Here, in the northeast, on the farm, it sure gets as hot as any southern summer, but the marsh is fresh water. Fed by a river instead of the ocean. There is magic here too, but to my untrained eye, sometimes it’s harder to find. You have to search. So, the other day, because I was homesick and in search of memory I went down to the river to play.

The air was cool. Gusts of gadflies skimmed the smooth surface. I let my memories of the south get all tangled up in this yankee river and all the old spirituals I used to know rose to the surface… Just when I thought my soul was lost, I heard the angels singing. O sisters lets go down let’s go down come on down o sisters lets go down down to the river and pray…I’ve got peace like a river in my soul I’ve got a river in my soul…

I ran those songs all together as the sun fell down the sky. I sang loud and splashed around and took the pictures. Off in the distance my husband mowed hay, his tractor rattling across the field.

Here are the pictures that came.

Lifetimes in Bermuda

2008-07-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

My house in Bermuda is called Ardsheal. She is old, at least 300 years, and sits on top of a hill overlooking Hamilton, the main city in Bermuda, on one side and the Atlantic stretching down into the Bermuda triangle on the other. The Hamilton side is constantly changing, the town growing into a small city, evidence of the times we live in, never enough, never enough, got to have more, more concrete, more cars, more noise, more money…. The view from the other side of the house is timeless and this is where the ghosts gather, where the view has never changed, the ghosts are clustered in thick pockets and running into them is like getting tangled in the fine filaments of a spiders web. Not unpleasant, but a little sticky, noticeable for sure.

So , What does this all mean?
I have no idea.

There may really be ghosts or they may be the fancy of my imagination. Everyone is free to believe whatever he or she chooses. But for me, they are there, and the stereo turns on by itself and so does the air conditioning, floors creak, and when the house is empty I hear them whisper. The culmination of all this is that I feel I am constantly living in the presence of layers and layers of human time. It reminds me of the continuum of existence. And how one step leads into the next. And how decisions made 100 years ago shape how we live today. And how it’s important to be aware of our thoughts and our actions and keep growing, otherwise we may stay fixed in time, ethereal and not quite of this world but simply floating through. And yet, I feel protected by the ghosts in my house. Swept into the understanding that there is no end of time, only time periods, as we understand it.

This past week my friends Lee and Mee came with their children to do a workshop in Bermuda and stayed at Ardsheal. ( Mee, knows something about ghosts and has a fascinating theory about ghosts and memories by the way, which I hope she writes about on her blog.) On Sunday night, Lee put on a dinner party to honor the spirits of the place. We sat at the big dining room table, 11 Bermudians and Lee and Mee and Jerry and I. We made a toast to the ghosts and they came out to play. There we were, the visitors, (that’s how I count myself) and the Bermudians that carry the last five hundred years of memories for their ancestors in their genes, and then the ones from the other side, who joined us, for the party. The ghosts swirled around the dinner and through the house that night, like the apparitions in Disneyland’s haunted house. One in particular came to Mee to say to me that she was worried about all the change. That the house is her house. And I had to concede. It seems she’s been there for at least a hundred years and I have only been there for fifteen years! Anyway, she is worried about what is going to become of the house and I had to gently explain that I had to move on, I couldn’t stop time. I am not willing to really become of this place where the living memory is impossible to decipher from the memory of the ancestors. That I was not stopping here in time but going forward. The change that is rumbling in the world seems to be reverberating through all levels of reality, even the world of spirit and memory. You can get stuck and hang on or you can go with it and move forward. See what’s around the next corner. I'm going with peering around the corner and moving on.

Anyway. Last year with these same thoughts and imaginings, I took photos and here they are. But before that

Mee’s blog www.princessknowitall.blogspot.com

Lee’s blog www.spiritrecovery.blogspot.com

What an adventure is what i know for sure.
xxx

something new

2008-06-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

feel like i have got back to myself, whatever that is, and the other morning i woke at 5:30, okay that's not a self i'm that familiar with. anyway, the mist was thick and i tromped out with my camera and for the first time in ages the inklings of a new project began revealing itself to me. something about the end of the machine age. hmm. we'll see how it develops but here are some beginning images. i haven't been ruthless with the edit. that can come later.

the observer/ the observed.

2008-06-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

my friend John Nelson, who has an exellent blog, www.jrnelsonphoto.blogspot.com, gave me some good advice regarding editing. he was referring to my post of the moon images, and he was absolutely correct. "be ruthless with the photos," he said, really only put what you really like. so i am taking his advice and putting only one photo here. i took it on my recent visit to bermuda. it interests me because i can construe it in many ways, but primarily, i am watching myself. and there are two of me going forward, the observed and the observer. in the end the journey is our own and our greatest gift is the potential for awareness. to live in this gift requires ruthless editing. it requires honesty of oneself that can be hard to look at. and finally it requires love. the te amo kind. and so here we all are, going forward, ultimately with only that to focus on.

i am grateful, deeply grateful, to all of my people who have my back and put out their hands to catch me when i falter . you know who you are and i hope you know that i am there for you in just the same way.

and, Dick, where ever you have gone you will always be in my heart. We will miss you sorely down here. i love you so, honey.

te amo, te amo, te amo!!!

xxx

more about rats, odd as that is!

2008-06-21T07:08:00.001-07:00

okay, see life will always deliver. i'm at the farm now and the day began with two rats sending rosie and heather shrieking from the barn. apparently these rats did not obey rat rules at all, instead of scurrying away, they just sat in the sink and stared while rosie and heather screamed at them.

heather said, "they are so much creepier than city rats! they are furry like some kind of squirrel or something. i can't go back in there. you go, rosie. "

"no way."

i thought i should go in and see, take a photo even, but now i catch my little lie that i told myself yesterday about preferring one kind of rat over another because totally, no way was i going into the barn to see those rats. barn rats or not. ugh.

and so we three humans scurried away and the rats are enjoying their time in the sink. :)

the conundrum of rats.

2008-06-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

okay, the rat is still really gross

Just returned from Bermuda. It is an idyll. and now am in New York. the difference between the two places is so bizarre I can hardly hold it all. in the city there are so many realities jostling side by side, it's easy to shut down and pay no attention at all. But if you decide to open, you find that the veneer is thin. You can lift up the veil and peer underneath pretty easily. and this is exactly what i love about the city. and love it i do, even if i'm done living here for the minute.

I walked to the hudson river and dreamed my way along one of the Jettys. suddenly a huge swarm of dragon flies descended. seemingly hundreds of these creatures, quite big, swooping and diving like helicopters around my head and up into the trees.

a group of school kids aged about 8 or 9 began to scream at the dragonflies and swat them away. i tried to capture these antics on my little point and shoot camera but it wasn't quick enough. a few feet a way two men fiddled with a movie camera and engaged in deep and serious discussion about something, the dragonflies and swatting kids didn't exist in their reality. a little further on a painfully thin woman posed for a photo with her daughter, a group of tourists moved past, keeping close to each other as if floating through this reality and watching from inside a translucent bubble. and all the while, off in the distance, the statue of liberty lifted her flame, still celebrating an idea of freedom, in spite of everything that's gone on in the last 8 years.

at the edge of the park, people sat with their dogs reading the paper and lay sunbathing right on the concrete while underneath them, in the river, float the detritus of modern life. A single shoe, a HUGE bloated RAT, pale green and hairless now, a giant feather, a swathe of plastic, bits of wood and garbage. i focused on the rat. gagged and began a whole big story in my head about how gross the city is etc.. then i had to laugh. so what did i think, that the rats in the barn on the farm are somehow easier to deal with than rats running through kitchens and over the garbage and floating in huge polluted bodies of water?

that's the reality i decided to go along with, that i prefer country rats to city rats. hey and what about the rats in Bermuda? they are huge but perhaps less horrifying because they live in that little paradise? did i decide somewhere along the line that the country rats are cleaner or more honest than the tough packs of rats in the city? Could there be such a thing as an honest rat? A rat is a rat. It just is. I’m the one with all the thoughts and opinions and judgments of things. And how is it possible ever to judge when in one 30 minute stroll along the Hudson river so many different lives are playing out. Layers and layers of reality, all easily glimpsed if you stop for a second and watch. if nothing else, what a divine little game!

moon on the water bermuda

2008-06-19T11:49:00.001-07:00

Bermuda

2008-06-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

here's the thing, no matter what i say, no matter what i think, in the end it often comes back to bermuda. i love it here . i love this house. i love the ridiculously wet humid air and the narrow roads. i love my friends. i love the beach. i love it all. and the day we arrived a white dove landed on the roof of the house and now seems intent on staying here at the house with Gini and Berto and Jenny and Anna and Jerry and the kids and me. she, i think she is a she, like the white tree i wrote about earlier, is quite friendly and comes close and let me take her portrait. I have some of her on film but in the meantime here she is in full technicolor, shot with my lovely little point and shoot digital camera.

The woods along the river

2008-05-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

a mystery lurks in the woods along the river...

more peru images

2008-05-24T14:48:00.001-07:00

Peru

2008-05-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

looking down into machu pichu

from trail to the old inca bridge
the city of machu pichu

where the water dances with the cosmos

there is an aspect of my life that i have been sidling up to and then shying away from for years and this year, in Feb., i went on a journey to Peru and this aspect of my life, that is very difficult to articulate, seems to have burst open.

this thing i'm unable to express has everything to do with light but I'm still looking for the words to describe this specifically rather than the vague exclamations of how amazing the trip was and what exactly opened up in my life but still after all this time the words seem like soap bubbles . they rise and float and pop when i try to catch them leaving a faint residue in my palm. the residue is just a ring of cliches. you know like i was in awe...machu pichu is a place of tremendous power... it was a life changing experience... blah blah blah. On top of this crisis of the cliches, i also have a tendency to speak in exclamation marks and so my enthusiasm manages to diminish the explanation even further. yes, the words are already spiraling and so i will leave this all alone and post the images.

these images, taken with a toy pinhole camera, (a pinholga which can be wildly inaccurate and absolutely perfect all at once,) come far closer to how i felt in the experience of being that close to the sun. surrounded by light. invited into a culture that still walks in two worlds, that of the earth bound and that of the sacred.

Spring

2008-05-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

These images cannot begin to do justice to the sheer extravagance of this tree. When other trees are still waking up and slowly beginning to unfurl their leaves this one bursts open so wide that everyone who sees her (she seems to be a her) has to stop and exclaim. The other night she literally seemed lit from inside, she glowed with life, shouting in tree language, "It’s Spring! Yippee!"

Spring is so amazing after the long long months of bare bleak beauty. And spring in the North East teases us. It’s sunny and warm one day and then blustery and freezing the next. I pout. I long for real sun. Hot sun. This tree reminds me not to lose patience. Her lushness is shocking. And then there is her scent, Stupefying. Fat bumblebees buzz and bump into each other, frantic to get at her.

The other night when she seemed to glow from an internal light I stood underneath her, put my face up and watched her radiate against the dark and breathed in her sweetness. I did a little secret dance. Sang a little secret song and after a while I feel sure she sang back. A gentle wind joined us and her arms shivered and swayed. bliss.

And so today, I made her portrait. Here she is. Best I could do to pay homage to her beauty.

Te amo,for sure.
And Gracias.

the face

2008-05-08T08:57:00.001-07:00

Where i live, on a farm in the hudson valley, there is a native story about the origin of the longhouse. In this story two boys come upon a living face in the land and the face directs the boys and tells the people how to live with the land and build their society.

These are the pictures i began making after wandering around the farm for about a year, just observing and wondering about the native people who lived here before the europeans came and what it must have been like then. One day the idea of a face placed in different spots came to me and so i bought a cheap halloween mask and began fiddling around with this idea. i began making these pictures long before i knew the native story of the face. mysterious.

We are so much more than i can begin to imagine. this is so exciting . i love this. i love when inklings of vastness come dropping down in physical form.

xx

te amo

2008-05-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

Thought for the day,
I picked this idea up from Eckhart Tolle in his widely read book, A New Earth.

He is talking about true love, unconditional love, and the understanding that this love which we all yearn for really contains no idea of want on the part of the lover. Needs no reciprocation.

And he says in Spanish they use two expressions to say I love you, te quiero which means I want you, I love you and te amo which just means I love you with no need or want implied.

Of course the more common usage is te quiero. te amo is much rarer.

I immediately called my daughter, Rosie, who happens to be a brilliant linguist ( spanish is her language) and poet and asked her what she thought.

“hmm.” She said “very interesting. That’s true. I suppose that is exactly how I would differentiate between the two.”

So this expression has been rolling along with me for weeks now. How many times can I honestly say te amo? And how wonderful and free things are every time I can say that with absolute truth.

Loverly.

These photos are from a day that Rosie and I were exploring the idea of fairies living in the city.

Te amo , Ro

Xx
Your mama

more photos. Herondale Farm

2008-04-28T13:41:00.001-07:00

the first asparagus. spring is here
the barn through an apple tree
he who cannot be blamed for grumpy moods :)
the farmer and his dog underneath the snag (a standing dead or dying tree.)
giving the dream the slip!

Giving the dream the slip.

2008-04-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

New Mexico in April
High up on a cliff overlooking the desert. a hot hard wind pushing against my back. Enormous Rocks growing out of the red dirt like petrified mythical creatures. Two headed panthers and snakes and dragons. 2 ravens fly overhead bickering at each other tilting crazy like in the wind. And then the wind falls away. I close my eyes. For a brief second no sound at all. No chatter in my head. Nothing. Emptiness. And then the wind again but still only wind between my ears blowing away the thoughts like dust.

New Mexico smells like hot baked sage even when it’s cold. The farm smells wet even when it’s dry.

Now am back at the farm and happy to be here and missing New Mexico all at once. the other morning I started to get all twirled around in my mind. Little tap tap tap of the grumps began to rise up and I started feeling all sad and blue, who knows why. (Maybe because I like the smell of hot baked sage better than wet cow poop, you know really urgent things like that.) Anyway, what ever the reason, I was really believing this grumpy mood. I Believed it was serious and believed that the grumps were me. (And probably my husbands fault if nothing else.) And then remembered what Gini Gentry said when we were fiercely shining a light around in my shadows and talking about her work. (or talking about remembering)

“We all bought into the dream honey, it’s just whether or not we’re willing to give the dream the slip.”

Oh yes, the slip, I thought. Yes, yes, that’s what I want to do. Give the dream the slip and find myself awake. When I remembered that I also remembered that I’m not New Mexico or the farm and that my husband cannot create or take away my mood (darn, love to have someone to blame things on) and neither can the smell of cow poop. I turned away from the voices in my head that I’m so attached to and believe are me. I let there be silence. one brief second. and then the thoughts. and then a few more seconds of silence and before i knew it the grumps had slunk away and joy had crept in. I looked out the window at the softly budding trees and the calves gamboling around and my camera waiting for me with the last of the beloved Polaroid film.

Gini is the most wonderful teacher. Check out her blog.
www.dreamingdownheaven.blogspot.com

These images were taken outside Cerillos New Mexico and to follow are Herondale Farm.

Excellent News!!!!!

2008-04-16T16:37:00.000-07:00

It seems that Tammi and her crew are being released!!!!
here is the latest email from Chris. so now i can breathe again. and dance and sing with out an underlying worry in my heart.

About an hour ago, we heard from the State Department that the release has taken place officially!
We were hoping to have phone/email contact with Tammi et al by now, but realize there is a lot going on and it's midnight there. We do know that they are being put up in a nice hotel and reportedly relaxed in the lobby and had a drink! The embassy reports them to be tired, but in good health. They have total freedom at this point, although must report back to receive their belongings and complete official paperwork on Friday AM. They will be accompanied by the US Embassy officials for that meeting. The State Department considers that a routine procedure (yes, it makes me nervous that they have to go back on Friday)....

I will contact you all once again as soon as I have talked to Tammi. God, I can't wait to hear her voice.

Thanks again for everything each of you has done!

Chris

Holding Tammi in the light

2008-04-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

So still Holding Tammi in the light and taking my friend Lee's advice to help bring the light by staying there myself. Well, that's not exactly what he said but how I'm taking it.

For me one of the greatest pleasures in life is wandering over the land with my battered pinhole camera and a dog or two at my heels. This image was taken on our farm in upstate new york last july around 5:30 am. I was busy watching nature, in full wonder at the silence, the feeling that no body was there except me and the quiet burbling brook and the birds swooping slowly over the swamp grass. Suddenly I felt eyes on me. hmm. who would be out there with me in the swamp so early in the morning? I couldn't see any other human. I wondered if I should feel nervous and then through the grass, about a hundred yards away I saw them. Three young deer, watching me intently. They didn't seem afraid. They didn't run when I loaded film into my camera. They just peered at me calmly and I imagined they were wondering what this strange human was doing so early in the day. They were just out of range for me to capture them watching me on film. But it didn't matter. It wasn't meant to be recorded that way I suppose.

And so I learned that while I thought I was watching nature. Nature was watching me. Or well, we are all one, part of the same great plan. And even without a physical image I revisit the moment and try and begin all days with that feeling.

Tammi, I hope these thoughts can reach you!!

xx
Iva

Thinking about Tammi

2008-04-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

My friend Tammi set off for Nigeria to help make films that bring light to the world and now it seems she and the crew have been arrested on charges of espionage. There is only one certainty to this story. Neither Tammi, nor the people she is traveling with are spies. It seems after that there is nothing certain. No one is quite sure where they are or how long they will be held. Everyone is concentrating on positive thoughts.

Her husband, Chris, said this in an email

" Please say a prayer for Tammi, not only for her safety, and the safety of their group, but also that she may STAY CONNECTED TO HER BIG STORY... she knows she is more than her ego body and she is committed to acting from that higher knowingness. My prayer is that she stay deeply connected to that knowingness. From there, she is always safe."

And so Tammi, I am holding that thought for you. That you can stay connected to your truest essence and that will hold you through this ordeal.

It is not a revelation nor a particularly original understanding that shining light into the shadows can be a dangerous endeavor but it is very sobering when the lives of our friends are endangered simply because they have the courage to take action.

So many of our lives here in America are sheltered from any understanding of how our lifestyle impacts the rest of the world and contributes to terrible suffering.

I am filled with admiration for Tammi and the rest of the crew for not making the easy choices. For choosing to leave the cosseted generic environment that so much of America can be and to strike out to help change this.

Tammi, I am thinking constantly of your safe return! I am holding you in my thoughts and imagining you emerging from the shadows back into the light.

xxx

Iva