Dreaming summer and The Book of Dreams

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

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

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

hawaii dreamtime.

Hawaii

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

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