i had last night perhaps the most scary nightmare i've ever had. but when i finally escaped my apartment Robin pulled me into a building where people were doing a performance in circles and i sat down with them in the back although I was having a panic attack. Everyone (mostly all gay boys from philly) was wearing tall veiled costumes sewn of many fabrics with soft horns and bike helmets and i put one on too and could be safe and calm.
robin, althea, patrick, and my dad (on the phone) were the people I went to for help and safety but none of them could.....

dah is in the hospital getting a blood transfusion right now. i was thinking about her and the blood and closed my eyes and was there in the hospital room in the blood in her body seeing the inside of her body (cancer) moving in her body and then just being inside of her or being blood being. dark and red. i wanted to just send her strength and be with her for a moment but it was different than that it was like a long meditation of fully holding one concept (the new blood in her body) in my mind. and holding and holding (neutrally almost). maybe that's prayer...

today i had 9 vials of blood taken out of me too. i can watch them put the needle in, watch the blood come out, not really feel pain but then inevitably about halfway through i look at my blood in the plastic container spilling out and i feel like a traitor and think omg i need you back in here, how can i let this leave me with no ritual or knowledge of where it's going.

an amazing little thing just happened by my foot. i saw a twirly tiny white thing fall down to the ground. it looked like a seed but i felt like it was a bug so i looked at it and it was moving a tiny tiny bit, but it had four thin long white wings that were five times as big as its body. i blew on it and it moved and two wings fell off and i felt bad and then it wriggled and the other wings fell off and it ran away uninhibited. it was just a little helicopter so it could get from the tree to the ground.

am i ready for bug time?

lua had an amazing idea (she is nine!) which is to take a flower press and dry bugs in it and then laminate them and make jewelry. kid witches....
what are the bugs that are all over the place?
flies
mosquitos
ants
bees

maybe dead fly wings or dried ants ;)

when i was in college i wanted to make tiny altars everywhere, secrets to find in my favorite corner of the library, under the chair of a classroom, in the woods, beneath the printing press
and in buenos aires there were spaces in the walls of the street in the shape of a tiny house where the electrical and water hookups of buildings went. they were often open and empty. i designed altars and shrines to go in those too
in the spring of 2009 i wanted to make shrines, i wanted to have funerals, i needed closing rituals. for the house on powers street that burned down, for my wisdom teeth that i never got to see, for carlos oliva in an abstract sense, for the end of relationships, for panic
now i just want to make altars for my own house. maybe they won't all be called altars, but i am feeling the need to externalize appreciation and recognition and prayer and ritual. spaces that are visual and physical of what i am holding mentally, what i can't always verbalize, what i forget until i need it and call on its strength.

spirituality in the way that ginger is spiritual. a place where i can look and feel a whirring kaleidescope projection of everything in the world that is ginger, traveling along a salmon tan transparent tunnel feeling an understanding of that taste, health, color in my depths

right now what i would like:
-a space for each season in the space between my storm window and my glass window frame
-a box about the process of rock formation, about metals, about deep in the earth, about geodes inside of hidden places
-a space about teeth (my teeth)
-a spell and herbal arrangement keeping mosquitos away
-an altar (an ode) to remedios varo (who i think about every day regardless)
-to my microflora, to the living bacteria of my intestines, to the billions of organisms within
-the systems: digestive, nervous, circulatory, endocrine
-each color

thinking a lot about eggs

(alchemy)

leaving warm bodies
nutrients within
small lives within
contained living spaces
nourishment
unsure what they hold inside
endless magic potential

i can't stop thinking about what it felt like to pick up that blue egg twenty seconds after it was laid and hold its warmth in my hands, even though there was not a baby chick inside, the concentration of everything in there, small heaviness

i just got an amazing remedios varo book. she is an everlasting favorite ultimate inspiration. so happy to finally get to look at these paintings in print instead of the internet.

i was lucky enough to get to visit this one in person in the MALBA in Buenos Aires every week.



some other favorites, total gold (green) m a g i c


"les feuilles mortes" (the dead leaves)


"exploracion de las fuentes del rio orinico"


"creacion de los aves"

what i was thinking about in portland oregon a month ago

the geminsides
illustrating my body as it feels
accepting that in a physical sense there is no light inside my body, trying to comprehend that these things and systems i think about all the time are never in direct light, have colors that are never visible, function without ever being seen (why can't i get my head around that?)
drawing things squeezing out of my pores (everything i'm thinking about and feeling)
my body squeezing out gunk and magic

--

a painting of me
a square cut out where my heart is
a tiny blue tea cup placed in that area on a shelf
spilling out dust and glitter
tiny blue and red (paper or ceramic?) birds flying out of there
(jealousy)

--

a portrait of me
with my hands over my abdomen
pulling out green slime, cords of dark green rope
a 3 d coffee cup on my bedstand overflowing with it
(anxiety)

--

two bodies
one with an internal turmoil, opacity and transparency (like layers of wax paper) showing different things going on inside, many colors
one with a similar but more ferocious and tumultuous scene inside
the second one is speaking and the sea is spilling out
(this is a triptych, or some form of panels)
-
next panel the sea is spilling out onto the first body who is lying on the bed
it is entering her bones
she is not speaking
how can she respond other than taking it into her own body? how else can she comprehend the depth than taking it deep inside?
it hurts to feel it but feeling it is the only option, as long as it doesn't wash her away
-
but now her muscles are made of lead. her bones are heavy. she is too weak to even move her face muscles into a smile. her own internal space is cloudy and is veiled by the storm.
-
that was the end of the triptych. the rest are not panels but quite a few drawings
one woman is flicking a trickle of it off of her elbow
one woman's feet are touching the ground. some travels her circulatory system, some seeps out through her feet
one woman, at her side is making a curved open palm, a nest, an entry, a cove, a safe space to nestle for a moment on its journey. it goes here and no further. a shadow drawing of white dots shows her tenderly letting it out the window, blowing it off of her hands.
one woman has a thin line of turquoise around her whole body. silver and black dots and lines are drawn to her, covering her, but don't penetrate beyond the turquoise. in her palm she holds a stone, they move from her protected body into the stone. she puts it on the shelf, or in a box, or in the park.

two are approaching. the space is symmetrical. one carries behind it a whirling storm of colors black red silver deep purple rose skulls and birds. the other carries a momentuous force of colors turquoise, gold, magenta pale yellow silver (?) prisms and crystals. in the middle is one crystallized shape, which their fingers touch. projecting upward, more gently, something new i don't know what


----

i wish i had bought these prints when i was there but i didn't have any money. i love betsy walton's art, i feel so connected to this aesthetic, i want to jump in there!!

when thinking about an herb plant series
a bit like altars too

layers
like different opacities / transparencies
for different points of growth

magnolia

peas

rose of sharon

basil

finding that when i spend a day outside interacting with people, i can't form words the next day, my mouth is closed and clumsy. at 2pm i might sit up and realize i haven't spoken yet today.

i love the necklaces from theblackspotbooks

loving Lori Nix's apocalypse miniatures

images from: http://www.lorinix.net/inside.php3?kateg=21#