Category: Refuge

 

This is Zoë Williams and their sweet babe, Iva Defiance. I experience Zoë as an individual who has access to all of themselves and operates with great presence and strength in many endeavors simultaneously. When I asked Zoë what it was that they do in life, this is what they said, “a community organizer, a collective liberator dreamer, a herbalist, ..does what they can to make a better world than the one their children were born into.” Righteous response. In addition, Zoë also is going to law school, a professional social justice advocate, working for the art collective Meow Wolf, in a committed partnership, and raising three children. Zoë is thirty-two years old and in my opinion, kicking some major life ass as a full blown compassionate warrior for justice.

There is another aspect of Zoë’s identity  that is currently on the forefront of American consciousness, Zoë identifies as non-binary, or gender-fluid. Think in concepts of gender duality, the Native American definition of “Two Spirit”; releasing oneself from the rigid social boxes of, “Male” or “Female” and the proscribed societal norms within those gender definitions. Instead of “He” or “She” in the conversation of identifying non-binary, there is “They” and all the choice of self or selves that is implied. Not either/or but many/any. This identification of self  and where a person identifies in the social landscape goes beyond the identification of Bisexual or Gay or Transgender or even the weirdo fluid/outsider catchall, Queer.

This is a new evolution in our human understanding of one another based on gender placement and biological identification and therefor a person’s use and worth in human society. This is in my mind, a staggeringly simple and profound answer to gender inequality. Its takes the argument right off the table whether male or female is superior, inferior,  or even equal. If every individual identifies as both male, female, a little of this and a little of that, or some new hybrid of the two, then we are all one, not two. Not a pair, but a an infinite variety of reflection. Take the gender wars off the table with non-binary leading the way, and then we’ve cleared an enormous space as a species in how we subjugate each other and we can then tackle equality in race and class with all that room made suddenly available.

Its a great step forward toward unification. And this is only the beginning of this conversation and evolution, it is a movement that has emerged in this current generation – imagine in twenty years what the movement will look like. I think this is very exciting and am so glad I met Zoë and listened to their experience with non-binary identification. Zoë and their partner are raising their children as non-binary and Zoë shared how these children are teaching adults around them how to let go of such spiritual and social rigidity, along with proper pronouns, the language of self-identification being very important. There is resistance and fear in response but there is also a great deal of curiosity and learning happening, Zoë and her partner are choosing to trust their children and themselves in letting that possibility of negative response be  part of the learning process.

Please enjoy Zoë Williams full length interview by following this link: https://vimeo.com/286764905

I met Zoë and Iva in the Denver, Colorado offices of the artistic collective Meow Wolf Denver  where Zoë works. Zoë works with this amazing DIY corporate art collective that originated in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2008, created The House Of Eternal Return , and is now opening satellite immersive art experiences first in Denver slated to open in 2020. There further plans to open in other American cities as well. When I rolled into Denver, a great friend who has a fantastic community there initiated introductions that resulted in me meeting and interviewing a powerhouse quartet of individuals while I was there this past July. Not only were Zoë and their child  Iva in the room with me when I arrived at Meow Wolf, but the woman who orchestrated me connecting with Zoë, Merhia Wiese who is the manager of the Meow Wolf Denver offices and whom I also had the great pleasure of interviewing later that same day. As the day progressed, Merhia further offered me the gift of connecting me to her mother and setting up an interview the following Monday. These next three stories are a reflection of that powerful interconnection that I’ve experienced every step along the way of conducting this epic project.

Zoë, Iva, I began our conversation here in this creative hub. Zoë with their clear direct gaze and speech; their child Iva having the same eyes and Iva’s joyful communication that filled the room; both intimately connected and fully individual from each other. Zoë with their clarity and compassion hard won through beginning years of being profoundly uncomfortable with her allotted female identification until they broke free of those confines through the emergence of non-binary identification. And the sweet babe Iva, so wild and sure in their joy and they have never been identified as anything but their own self. Iva will or won’t make the decision as identifying male or female when their time comes along with their siblings in Zoë’s family, the choice is completely up to Iva to define what they are in the world.

Another really cool thing that Zoë is exploring as a parent is their evolution as a social justice warrior that includes their family. Zoë has been a political activist that has put their body on the front line of political protest, describing situations of intense civil disobedience that they have participated in over the years but that now due to health issues and being a parent, has made the  choice to pull back from that front line of aggressive activism. But Zoë isn’t retiring and fading back into domestic life in any way, they are just shifting the parameters. Zoë is currently committed to calling focus and attention to the immigrant parents and children that have been and continue to be separated from one another in ICE detention centers all over the country. Zoë at their own  and their children’s passionate response to this current battle of injustice, is incorporating public protest story time and lemonade stands at the nearby ICE detention centers that are located outside of Denver. Involving children and the family dynamic to political protest is Zoë’s current family and social political objective. To introduce the concept to other parents and families that they can participate in the political landscape in this manner in being hands on in actively advocating for the shape of their children’s societal future. That they can actively create this compassionate world with their children as its being shaped.

And just an FYI: I did just a surface Google search this morning about the status of the 1,475 children that went missing from our government tracking agency the Office of Refugee and Resettlement back in April 2018 and there are still only vague answers about where these children might be. 400 children are still in custody in ICE detention centers and have not been reunited with their families and it is 45 days past the promised deadline that these families would be reunited. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has just welcomed 44 new immigration judges in preparation to try the most immigration cases that this country has ever experienced – this atrocious practice of separating families at the our borders who are seeking asylum or entering our country illegally is nothing new and will obviously be continuing. Its a gut wrenching industry of another branch of privatized incarceration that this country is embracing on a corporate level of creating financial profit off the misery and inhumane treatment of families and children.

Zoë is intelligent, integrated, thoughtful, and passionate. They demand the best from themselves and give it each day. Zoë is motivated, organized, loving, and kind. They are ambitious and strong and galvanized by the pursuit of justice. Being a once outsider has lit a fire under this force of nature that has learned through suffering the meaning of self identification. This individual also understands their place of privilege in this word and uses it with social awareness and teaches their children to do the same in service for  the people who are given no voice in our culture.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

I’ve got a great friend who knows a lot of cool women in Denver. This friend tells me I have to meet and interview Alicia Cardenas, an amazing woman who has been running her own business, Sol Tribe Tattoo and Body Piercing for years, and raising a kickass daughter while doing both in her own signature style. I didn’t have anymore information before I reached out to Alicia except that recommendation. But like every woman in this project, I could just get a read off of her, that yes, this is one of the stories I want to hear and add to the conversation I am having with American women in this past year.

There are some days that you wake up and do the thing and meet the teacher you were supposed to have that day in life to make you a more aware human being. Somedays you are the teacher yourself and that is a good thing but its really a great thing to have the opportunity to learn and leave the suddenly worn out parameters of yourself behind and fit into a larger, looser space. Meeting. talking with, and listening to Alicia was one of those student days for me, I invite you to do the same here:

To enjoy the full length interview with Alicia, please follow the link and enjoy –  https://vimeo.com/283352778

When Alicia and I were messaging back and forth about the interview process before we met, she said an interesting thing that sparked me. Alicia stated that she didn’t know if she was a good fit for my project because she didn’t believe in the concept of “safe”, that it didn’t exist and that it was a byproduct of privilege to live in the sensation of that unreal thing. I responded that was exactly why I wanted to interview her and that I didn’t have an agenda of what safety and refuge could mean to each women I talked to, I want to know what these ideas mean to each individual, thats where I think its the most juicy. That Alicia was experiencing these ideas I had been exploring from a vastly different perspective, that made me excited to meet her, I knew I was going to learn something true.

Alicia and I met in the morning at one of her sacred spaces in life, her shop Sol Tribe. Its an warm, sensual, environment. All dark woods and metals and spirals and hoops. Needles and ceramics and alters. It smells good and is an environment of dedicated creativity.

And diversity. There is a Pride rainbow flag hanging from the window of the shop that is directly across from one of the rainbow crosswalks that decorate the queer-friendly Denver neighborhood.

Queer, non-binary, trans, cis, black, brown, white, feminist, weirdo, whatever you are into just check your bigotry at the door and engage in respect – This is Alicia Cardenas’s world and this is Sol Tribe.

We started talking and one of the first topics we explored was what its like to be a single mom and operating her own business. Alicia has been asked in many interviews what its like to be a hispanic, single mom running her own tattoo shop in the US today. her response to me, “Lucky. ” Which was a brilliant answer. Alicia went on to explain that though we are addressing privilege, and white privilege, in current social conversations, what American privilege means is the real conversation.

We in this country have a vast, complicated system of classification that determines who gets the stuff and who doesn’t. Obviously, caucasian straight men are at the top of the pyramid but its not just skin color or identified gender that gives you the go to rise to the top. Its education. Access to education gives you the tools to navigate the ladder of class, gives you choice. Access to that education is systematically made difficult to individuals who are not caucasian, not male, not born into wealth, not born into “enough”. This is where class supersedes skin color, but those class lines are in alignment with your racial background and if you identify with having more than enough or not. It comes down to what you are taught, how your class placement defines you. Education gives an individual a possible loophole to move with more fluidity through our system of class.

Then there is the reality of American privilege thats sets us apart from the rest of the global community, it also isolates us in our American bubble of what is “real”. Suffering to success, we have a very skewed and rigid vision of what those realities look like and the realities in between. Alicia spoke clearly and with great intelligence based on personal experience as a world traveler and educated observation, of how these factors all go into American privilege. Alicia pointed out that we do not as Americans, experience poverty on the same level that most of the rest of the world does, we are a country with extraordinary abundance and we take that for granted and mindlessly consume our resources, willfully ignorant of the finite ending that is looming ahead. There is definitely poverty here in the US, everywhere, right next door to those who have enough. But it is not experienced to the great depth that most of cultures in the rest of the world experience. It comes close on our Native American reservations, in downtown LA on Skid Row, the Appalachian mountain communities, but not to the overwhelming magnitude experienced elsewhere . With this padding of great wealth we take so much for granted and feel entitled to everything. Our collective misunderstanding of our country’s experience with suffering makes us quite juvenile in our national behavior and how we play it out on an international level. We are the bratty kids in the corner refusing to share our toys with each other and the rest of the classroom. We expect as our right, so much more than the rest of the world and kick and scream instead of collective problem solving if we feel denied. We don’t take care of each other very well and we definitely do not share responsibility with the other countries on this planet.

In Alicia speaking with great intelligence on all of this and much more – check out her full interview, its quite a treat – she was reinforcing conversations I’ve been having with people quite a bit, especially in the last couple of years under our current political administration. We are having an exciting dialogue about American privilege, white privilege, class, gender, sexual orientation, our abusive national ancestry, with greater truth than ever before. It’s been so extraordinarily uncomfortable and necessary and we still have so far to go as a nation to integrate  our vast differences and the truth of our heritage. But this is where education is so important. We educate each other on our personal life experiences and how we actually effect one another.

As a white woman born in the US with access and understanding of the benefits of education, I have got it made. I have had my struggles which I will not belittle as they have made me who I am and I like who I am. But my struggles are not as demoralizing on a daily basis as most other people around me. My weight is not as back-breaking, I was given the privilege of seeking and obtaining enough in this world simply because my skin is the right color and I was able to cultivate my mind through a wonderful world education. I don’t experience the same barriers as others not born into my world because simply, they are not there. Lucky indeed.

Another way that I am lucky is that I was born with a personality that loves to be challenged. My whole life I have sought out and thrived on having my assumptions blown wide open.  The national conversations we have been having in the last couple of years have been challenging and exciting as I repeatedly experience coming up against one of my cultural assumption walls, having it be uncomfortable, and then opening up to letting my misinformation go. To learn, everyday what it means to be someone else. To learn about my own level of misinformation and what I have always taken for granted with each eye-opening experience. To be humble about my lack of true knowlege but to embrace the opportunity to learn about what it means to be a compassionate human.

So listening to Alicia, I had one of those learning curve moments. That day Alicia was one of my teachers. While I stood behind my camera and watched and listened, the shiver learning went down my back. I understood that much more how deep my misconceptions lay of what is real in my relationship to my privilege. How much I have to let go of in my entitlement. In how much space I take up just because I was born into the class that I was. Just because my skin is white, just because I am who i am. I got “woke” in that time with Alicia and it will be a continual learning curve my whole life and I thank the teachers who will be patient and take the time to explain to me the obvious.

What surfaced after my conversation with Alicia was a new,  deeper understanding of my assumed privilege. It sunk in after the interview and continues to blossom in my consciousness, its how I need to stop wasting my privilege. To know I have access to a life experience denied to so many means I have  greater responsibility to it, I need to treat this privilege with awareness and respect. I have a tendency to purposefully self-destruct at different times, to burn down my house in a cleansing emotional fire and walk away to start something new. To put myself if desperate situations where I deplete my resources down to zero and then indulge in a panic game to distract myself by feeling unworthy of abundance. Its juvenile and completely unnecessary as an fully adult woman with as much opportunity as I have. We all have our teachers at the right time when we are ready to learn and move forward. I have stepped through a door of awareness recently and another one is just right around the corner. I will not waste the gifts given me any longer, its time to pay it forward consciously.

But enough of my experience and back to Alicia Cardenas. Alicia has a great story; discovered the tattoo world as a teenager and found her place in the world right out of the gate in that culture of outlaws and weirdos. She has not needed to compromise her true voice ever and the life long cultivation of her strength is evident in every gesture she makes. Alicia has chosen to raise her daughter outside the confines of preconceived motherhood and what the privilege of education can look like for her child, she is all in one hundred percent. Alicia moves like a queen, regal and strong and deliberate. Her words are intelligent and have weight, she is precise which I greatly admire. She is a community leader and teacher to many, she creates and holds sacred space. She understands the importance of asking for help as it does indeed take a village and she understands what it means to help others by often just holding space for them. Alicia is paying attention and she has an expectation that others are paying attention as well and there’s no room for bullshit there. I admire this American woman, Alicia’s clarity is a gift and she gives it freely and with grace.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

 

Robin Cordaro did not want me to take her photograph. It was a big deal, she said that she was allowing me to video our interview. Once the camera was rolling she put on her sunglasses and projected from there. Robin was totally comfortable with me photographing everything else about her life at her campsite, but not her eyes.

Robin and I met at in the bathroom at Lake Trinidad campgrounds in southern Colorado. A stereotypical place for women to meet and connect as there ever was one. All those stories that merge in and out of reality of where and how women speak and connect with each other, themselves, and men and masculine energy. Thats what struck me the most in Robin and I’s interview and conversation – the stereotypes of what it means to be a woman or feminine in this country. The traditional trappings of the ideas and expectations of gender, how they are handed down from generation to generation, what is continued and what is thrown away, and what is birthed and changes everything,

The feminine identity is in great flux at this point in time – it probably always has actually, as feminine is the closest we have to daily, tangible, divinity. The creation of life and the care-taking of fragility. The landscape of emotion and shadow. The joy and pain of creating life and the task of maintaining it to ensure our survival as a species. Feminine is the task of the warrior, to fight to maintain balance, to be aggressive and strong and know when to go into battle for justice. It is also manipulation, spider mind games, and psychological warfare. Feminine is sex and allure, the power of seduction. Feminine is problem solving and invention and art and engineering.

Big stuff.

Robin Cordaro has had many identities as a woman. As she describes herself, Robin has been a mother to three children, and she lost one of her daughters to death – “Mother To All”, she calls it being a result of that loss.

Robin has been a wife a few times, a ‘Stepford Wife”, and also a widow. She has been the Boss/director in her own architect and engineering career and firm, Robin was a student to achieve that career later in life and after her first divorce. Robin is now a reiki practitioner and reflexologist and is fully immersed in the energy work movement, she defines herself as a healer. She has recently taken up creating jewelry as she has been on the road traveling for the past three months in her camper with her beautiful orange cat, Nunzio, the two of them have the same colored eyes. Robin describes how she has been all these identities and now as she enters into her sixtieth year and through traveling and setting off into the unknown, she is finally exploring who she “really is”, who is Robin? That’s her current quest.

To watch Robin’s full interview, please follow the link and enjoy: http://vimeo.com/280420775

Robin strongly identifies  with the social gender politics of what has more traditionally defined what is a “woman” and what is a “man”. Its the time period in when she grew up and I imagine, reinforced  in the Italian -American culture that she married into in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. She made it very clear that she is and was a feminine “Girl” that made her way up in a “Man’s World” through her career as a contractor and builder. She tells in this video clip how she is most comfortable in a dress and once she proved herself after thirteen years navigating a male-dominated industry, she stopped wearing pants to work and only wore dresses as a statement of self-proclamation.

Robin is a wild mix of life-experience and ideologies. She is bold, independent, adventurous, and curious. Robin is determined, practical and a problem-solver through her completion of architect degrees and her former career. Robin identifies with the traditional trappings of what it means to present yourself as feminine in our world and is the most comfortable with herself in a dress. Robin is intuitive and a believer in the magic between the natural world and humans as a reiki practitioner and energy healer. Robin also carries a gun, has a permit for it and has obviously been a gun advocate throughout her life. When we first met in the campground bathroom, Robin shared with me her belief that the creation of Sanctuary Cities for incoming immigrants to the US in response of the recently enforced practice of deportation, arrest, and child separation that our current administration has employed with such overwhelming force, is a really bad idea in her opinion. Robin feels that Sanctuary City status in the US will only make those cities more violent as the people immigrating will bring their violence with them. Further, Robin believes if she got in a situation where she had to defend herself from such an immigrant with her gun, she would be the one punished and not the person of illegal status as the laws would affect them differently.

Robin experiences compassion and fear in a flux of light and shadow, we all do in response to what life has taught us thus far. I have been learning so much about fear and what we do with it culturally. On the road in this journey of this project, I explore daily how we each grow from fear and how it stunts everyone of us.

Being a woman and identifying with female in our current American culture, its a dizzying spectacle of opportunity. We are so lucky here that though our autonomy is under constant attack by the patriarchy, we still have so much room and means and support and solidarity in exploring what that might look like to each one of us, what kind of feminine do we want to be each day. In comparison to so much of the world and its cultures and its fear of the divine female, we are truly in a position of privilege.

My hope and belief is that because of our privilege, that we can listen to each other and witness one another and hopefully hold one another in spirit when we are going through the darkest corners of our fear. That in doing that, the fear won’t rule the day, we will come through the emotional storm and return to the clarity of positive human connection.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

This is Eva Nieto whom I met in Santa Fe at The Kings Rest Inn, a beautiful, bright spirit in her generosity that I had the pleasure to interview. I had just pulled into Santa Fe and I was tired and scratchy-eyed from desert driving and was in need of a cool, quiet, place. In Santa Fe there are a stretch of colorful, old-school motels that harken back to the 1960’s in decor and sometimes in upkeep. These motels scatter whats left of Route 66 that passes through Santa Fe, bright, old fashioned lights among the adobe strip malls and cement. I chose Kings Rest at random and the fact I liked the motel’s marquee and the cheap price for a night’s stay.

I pulled into the motel’s drive and it seemed deserted, I had made a reservation online and with the sense of desertion about the place and the locked door at the office I was starting to border on cranky, I was travel done and wanting to lay down for a bit.

 

Then, there was a Eva. A big, bright, smile and friendly energy, she was in the middle of cleaning rooms but she put that aside and hunted down the owner so I could check in. Eva made me feel welcome when I needed that extra bright smile and the warmth that she had for me. Eva was a wonderful gift that got me over my over-extended moment and I just enjoyed the conversation we had and the time she made.

Eva has the bright shine about her that compels me to reach out spontaneously and ask a woman who I don’t know if they would be interested in sitting down with me and be interviewed for this project. I had decided pretty much on the spot in meeting Eva that wanted her voice to be a part of this work. I didn’t muster the courage to approach her until I was checking out the next day all the while keeping my eye out for her – and there she was right when I finished packing up my truck. So much serendipity along the way of this journey. i asked her if she had a minute to talk and be interviewed by me, I told her this was a project about talking about fear and what safe could mean and she agreed in her easy, open way that I think she approaches most things – but we needed to do it quickly as Eva needed to get to work on the rooms. Eva was teaching me from the beginning of our conversation about the realities of privilege; in time and what you can do with it or can’t do with it.  Eva is quite graceful in her generosity of spirit.

To watch Eva’s full length interview, please visit http://vimeo.com/278370575

Eva talked of being born and raised in Santa Fe, she has never left. Eva has wanted to travel but with working everyday pretty much her whole life along with family obligations, that’s not an option. Eva comes from a large Pueblo Indian family, indigenous to the Santa Fe area. She has six sisters and five brothers, two of whom have died along with her father. Her mother she loves very much and is still alive, one of her sisters is their mother’s main caretaker.

Eva mentions briefly and generally about a past childhood trauma when asked about feeling unsafe, she doesn’t want to go into the details. This conversation isn’t about summoning up old painful ghosts, this interview is about forgiveness, deep faith, and the hypocrisy of lies of abuse vs. the truth.

Eva believes completely in God as her Savior. Eva believes deeply in forgiveness and “doing unto others as you wish done unto you.” She gives all her frustrations or anger up to her god everyday, all day and projects kindness as much as possible instead. Eva doesn’t believe in holding grudges, again, judgement is up to her god and not her place to decide. She doesn’t want to carry around all that weight anyway. Eva does have a strong, passionate opinion about not going to church –  she doesn’t have the time to attend due to working everyday – because of the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in relation to the legacy of sexual abuse by certain pedophilia priests to children in the congregation. Eva spoke at great length and expression about her views on priests and the church sitting judgement on people’s behavior when the practice of sexual abuse by the priests to the children in congregations, goes uncommented on or censored in any real way.

Eva has absolutely no time for this kind of false moral foundation and prays to her god directly, one on one, everyday and she experiences her prayers always being listened to and answered.

Eva is bright and easy in her energy; open, kind, smiles, devout, generous, honest, insightful, truth-teller.

Eva experiences her sacred safety not in the walls of the Catholic Church, but with her daily, personal, relationship with the divine and the ongoing conversation that she and God engage in between themselves.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

 

What Happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas – right?

I was in Las Vegas, Nevada earlier this month and what happened to me there I mostly left behind and what stayed with me, I released into the coral pink sands of Utah.

Vegas, all hard glitter and harder sun. Born from a mobster’s wet dream of making legit money and some kind of social respectability.  The Rat Pack’s playground of the best entertainers in the biz and then the bloated corporate take over of today selling Lady Luck to flip flops and khaki shorts. This is America.

Vegas today is also home to some of the mot lucrative circus/cabaret shows in the US and internationally.  Fun, shiny, circus under the umbrella of Spiegelworld and named Absinthe or Opium just to name a few. Cirque Du Soleil is still running strong, the circus has arrived in the desert and found refuge there.

The world I lived and moved through in NYC was populated with quite a few of these circus/cabaret performers and I had the great pleasure of living with, playing with, sometimes performing with, and photographing these fabulous individuals for quite a few years. One of my best friends was doing a circus cabaret show recently in Vegas and thats why I came there and had the total pleasure of reconnecting with her beautiful heart-light and also that lovely spectacle that  the circus always is, wherever you meet once again.

It was coming back from one of these shows that i had my own run in with being unsafe and reminded how vulnerable I can be as a woman in this country. On  a journey of investigation in American women stories of vulnerability and in the need of safety, it makes heart-sense to include my own. We are all in this together.

This is what i remember. I’m walking across a bridge, leaving The Strip behind me as i move in the warm, desert night.  Darker over here away from the big lights, makes me more relaxed. I walk to my truck, just twenty minutes away, I’m used to walking places, always have. I don’t know Vegas, I don’t know where you are “supposed” to walk or “not to supposed” to walk in this town, not a delineation I’ve ever been that much interested in or ever dissuaded me in the past. I’m just walking. The air feels fine in the dark after the fire of afternoon desert sun. I round a corner – i’m on Jerry Lewis Way I notice with a grin, about to intersect with Dean Martin Drive, partners even in intersections.

Then the stalking game begins; black, four door sedan creeping along side me all of a sudden. They do this, those men in their cars, appear out of nowhere seemingly, thrusting themselves into my reality by their creepy creep car stalking shenanigans, raising my hackles immediately with their bullshit sexual intimidation tactics. Obviously, this scenario has occurred before in my life, quite a bit actually. I would walk or ride my bike everywhere over the years and this car stalking has been a regular occurrence and has never not put my teeth immediately on edge. Makes me want to bite. The quiet ominous big black thing like a shark biding its time rolling along side me, the anonymous male – it has never, not once, been a woman doing this – hiding behind all that dark metal, hiding and advertising his need simultaneously. Trying to make me scared and capitulate simultaneously. Makes me want to bite.  My warm relaxed night, shattered and now i’m zeroed in on this stupid, sexual power struggle between myself and this creeping black car.

So, this goes on for an endless span of seconds where I ignore the stalking shark and he continues to roll along side me, Then he speeds up and turns the corner and in no time for me to smooth my hackles and relax again, he’s back, the dark shark. This also always happens, upping the ante by the speed up and then circling back with more force and more need. This time, he inches closer to the curb, slows down even more, almost up on the curb now and rolls down all his windows. Here we are, just he and I and he’s already assessed every inch of me and I haven’t even seen his face. But I feel him, most definitely I feel him and all that strange need.

And I’m not having it. I don’t want that fucking weird need so fuck right off and leave me alone! And thats what i say into the gaping open windows and to underline that statement I spit out the ice cubes I had been sucking on and throw the rest of my water thats in the cup I’m carrying through those open scary windows that hide all that scary weird fucked up energy trapped in that dark car – get away from me and stop trying to frighten me!

Then everything happens in fast forward/slow motion. The hiding need jumps out of his shark car shouting and swearing at me, all rage dark star force, tall and wide as a house, man-muscles clearly defined because he has no shirt on to better display all those man-muscles.

Rage shouting, “Don’t you know who I am?!?” “Bitch!” “Don’t you know who I am?”

Yes, I know who you are. You are fear compounded into rage after years, centuries, millennia of being treated like shit and made to feel inadequate until you became inadequate and surrendered your fear and suffering into rage and learned how to attack women to access your sense of strength and safety. Yes, I know who you are.

Every woman on this planet knows who you are.

So the shark has a face and he moves so fast up to me and as I turn to face the shark, he punches me in the face, right side, my jaw on fire and I’m down. The shark bends down over me and rages and punches me in the face one more time. I’m completely fucking stunned, I’m not anything definite anymore. And then, the shark is gone. It’s over.

I stand up. I am only aware of the fact that my face and jaw feel very hot and adrenaline has taken over. I am also becoming aware that my right wrist and hand are quite hot and I’m experiencing that bloated numbness in my right wrist that occurs when the body is protecting you from the fact that you’ve probably damaged yourself acutely in some way. I feel all that hot and wonder if something got broken when I fell, or broken in my face. I hope not, I am on the road in Las Vegas, Nevada and in the middle of a quest in collecting women’s stories about fear and the need of safety and I have absolutely no time or any personal safety net to be seriously injured. The irony escapes me in the moment. A taxi pulls over and anxious female faces peer out from the back seat and ask if I’m ok, they saw the whole thing, dimly I hear car horns honking, I’ve had an audience the whole time the shark had attacked. I’m fine I say, because that’s what you say and I am standing so I must be some kind of ok.

I’m on my phone already calling my friend who just had performed and who I was getting my truck to pick up, the reason I was walking on such a nice night, to pick up my truck back at the hotel. Connecting with myself again, the growing realization that my wrist really fucking hurt but my face was only warm, talking to my friend with a sob of belated fear when I said I had been attacked by a man on the street.

Cut to back at the hotel. My friend is there, she is all love and concern, its good that she is there. We are able to laugh, we always are and thats what saves us every time. The hotel concierge is also lovely, a very nice woman who gets me ice and calls the police and tells me that she has been mugged before, shares her fear to help with mine, so i don’t feel isolated in my experience. Thats what we women do for each other. We round up the wagons and create a circle of protection and give comfort and make each other smile. We create refuge, sanctuary, for each other in the face and resulting repercussions of all that strange, male, need that we experience daily in one way or another.

The police finally come. This is what happens:

Then there is the next day. My wrist is sprained from how i fell on it after being punched in the face by the shark. Its in a brace and will be a pain in the ass traveling rough the way I am for this project. I can handle it. My face is fine, not even a bruise and thats what stays with me even now, the ease in which this man could punch a woman in the face and leave no mark. The ease in which this man could punch a woman in the face once and then again when she was down on the ground. The policeman said that where i was walking was a known prostitute hang out street and most likely the shark was a pimp. How well this man knew to pull back on the strength of his blow, strong enough to shut me up but not strong enough to damage the merchandise. That practiced knowledge breaks my heart.

Here I am on that next day. I’m smiling and having fun because as my good friend, said there in Vegas, “You Sara, are always undaunted.” That is a true statement. I have experienced violence at the hands of men before in my life, most women have. That violence has happened over my forty-six years in being alive and its been harmful and painful and scary, but I have been lucky and not been permanently broken or killed, so I carry on and live the life I choose, undaunted.

I hung out with this beautiful circus child that afternoon who asked me if I wanted some of her strength. She offered this unsolicited and with a confident grin on her face. It was an earnest offer of her gift and I accepted, we held hands and she transferred some of her strength she could spare over to me, I was in need in that moment. I enjoyed the circus family that day – one of which had actually been in that honking car trying to scare off the shark the night before and witnessed part of the attack, how strange the circle of  that!

I was safe, it could have been so much worse. That what we women tell ourselves in those situations, how it could be so much worse and those horrific almost happenings picture-float through my mind because those much worse situations happen all the time, to other women, my sisters.

I’m going to skip forward a bit, a coda if you will.

I left alot of that shark attack in Vegas when I left the next day, but not all of it. I traveled to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes National Park in Utah with the express purpose to blow away the rest of the shark’s hold on my psyche. I’ve performed this kind of release ritual after a violent encounter before, it helps clean out inner space. The landscape in this part of Utah is Mars red and pink and orange and gorgeously alien. Great piles of coral pink sand stretch for seven magic miles and the common human response is dune buggy race the hell out of the landscape, all buzzing, racing mechanical bugs skittering across the surface.

 

This is where I blew the shark into so much sand. Blew him into the wind that caught his essence up, all his fear, and scattered it amongst all these mountains of similar sand crystals to be reshaped, repurposed, made beautiful.

And here comes the fun, magical part that sugar dusts my life experiences at this point in my life. I experience real, serendipitous magic on a regular basis and I just love its appearance and punctuation.

I’m performing this ritual of transforming the shark into sand and I have a little alter that I’ve created in the sand and doing my releasing thing. I had noticed a black beetle methodically making its way toward me and my circle in the sand and without thinking, I gently diverted its course and thought i had sent it on its way in another direction. As to not be disturbed. I know, I wasn’t paying attention, silly of me. But this beetle was not to be deterred in giving the gift of its animal medicine when I needed it most and when I was specifically calling on it as well. Rude of me to knock on a door and not acknowledge the creature that answers and opens up to me. I open my eyes at one point in my ceremony and I see my beetle friend right near me and I could tell by its surrounding tracks in the sand that it had followed the circumference of the circle that I had drawn in the sand around me, circling me as well and then entering into the circle and outlining my thighs and rear with its tracks before exiting the circle and was currently making its slow, confident way over my notebook and animal medicine tarot cards and heading off into the sand. Its work with me, complete.

I did some research on my beetle visitation and i found that my beetle is known as the Stink or Skunk beetle because it will stand on its head and let out a super stink as protection if feeling threatened – also known as the Circus or Acrobat Beetle due to its ability to stand on its head and stink you. This is all so connective and funny and brilliant as I’ve always admired the skunk and considered that amazing stinky animal a part of my team of animal magic and here this beetle has Skunk magic too. Then the obvious connection to the circus and my bestie happens to be an acrobat – pretty good kismet there. Magic is everywhere you believe it exists, and in my ceremony of blowing away the pain of the shark, I’ll take the help wherever it offers itself.

This is what the Animal Totems: Dictionary of Insects, has to say about my Stink/Skunk/Circus/Acrobat Beetle:

Stink Bug aids with clarifying dreams, visions and insights. She can show the connections between seemingly separate unrelated events with heightened intuition. Pay attention to your instincts about people, situations and circumstances. She can demonstrate the order in which things are done, designating each level in the process of metamorphosis. Increased sensitivity to what is hidden and reading between the lines occurs with Stink Bug medicine. She can be a sharp communicator getting to the point. Are you being direct? She helps protect and shield energy and emotions when needed. She teaches the balance of concealment and surfacing…. Odors have both attractant and repellent qualities. Stink Bug will guide in the proper use and balance of the positive and negative attributes of what is psychically sensed as well as what is physically sensed in your surroundings. Stink Bug medicine shows how to transform and shed what is no longer needed…. 

So, bye bye shark in the sand, I release you and let you be reimagined beautiful in another sand shape.

This is how I take care of myself. Heal wounds and let go, making myself safe while traveling on the road, the stranger in strange lands.

This is the nature of refuge.

This is JP Parr from Los Angeles, CA and is just a treat all around to engage with. JP is one of those women with a brain and mouth and spirit that is fully engaged, ramped up to ten, and operating cheerfully on a multitude of levels simultaneously. When looking over my notes from the first time I viewed our video interview, this is what I wrote,

“Artist, graphic designer, painter, kind, articulate, queer, smart, funny, lots of words, connected, married, death, busy, maker, writer, reverend, community, producer, non-profit, director, happy doing many things.”

I think thats a good introduction and a place to start in getting to know JP Parr.

JP is a great person to talk about anything really and in the context of this project and the questions that I ask about feeling unsafe, sanctuary, and how that lead to our conversation about asking and receiving help, she was incredibly thought-provoking. JP was quite vulnerable and transparent in her experiences with tragedy and loss and those emotional effects on her. JP was  incredibly articulate in her views and personal experiences of navigating the difficult road of gay marriage coupled with immigration in this country, the plight of DACA and the Dreamers, the isolationism of the US and the loss of possibility that we experience in the dismissal of our neighboring country, Mexico. JP also talked at length of her experience of being an artist and how artistic creation is sanctuary for herself and then providing a creative space for others to engage in.

And JP is funny and silly as hell, her humor she weaves with great effect in all her self-expression, making her truth a heart to heart conversation thats a total pleasure. Her expression is real.

If you would like to enjoy JP’s full length interview, please visit http://vimeo.com/276541404

Again, when I was watching JP’s video interview in the last few days, what I was struck the deepest with was JP’s viewpoint on asking for help. That is one of the questions that I ask each woman in this project – do you ask for help? The response and continual connective thread through JP’s experience and outlook in life in relation to asking and giving help is generous and practical,. You give help where you can in the way the specific person in question will respond the best to it, leave your own agenda at the door and just be present to the person in need. When you are in need of help, ask for it, be graceful in receiving it, do the favor of letting that person help you. A favor that benefits both of you as that is the connective action between human beings, helping each other so the day moves forward for all.

This idea for compassionate connection between individuals, all individuals,  is the motivation behind this project. We are in such a painful, uncomfortable time in our American society right now, I want us to know each other. I am by nature an optimist and I also believe fiercely in the endeavor towards justice for all even if it is just an ideal. It is an ideal state of human existence in which compassion and the resulting wisdom dictates our social interactions and foundation. We suffer in life, it is life’s nature to be threaded with suffering. in this ideal state of social care-taking, helping each other is paramount so we are all given a daily chance at safety and prosperity. I believe in this possibility with my entirety, I will always fight for this endeavor.

But this week has been hard on my optimism. The tearing away of immigrant children from their families and being imprisoned as a manipulative tool for forcing an advancing political agenda; my heart is broken and my body nauseous.  Yes, American history is rife with using this exact tactic, this is an old, evil story in our history. To have it played out again, now, my psyche has no place to absorb that reality. The fact that there are great, large numbers of people in this country that are completely alright and advocate this action, is divisive to the core.

The weirdest things will be the final stroke that cracks you. Last night I was at a movie theater here in Santa Fe, NM – movie theaters have been great refuge for me here on the road – and I was watching this silly movie, the newest Jurassic Park one thats just come out. I was watching in a theater full of kids that were really into it so that always helps to be surrounded by people invested in the story unfolding in front of you to become invested yourself. As I was watching this story about dinosaurs and humans battling it out, I was becoming more and more depressed by the horrible abuse perpetrated by the humans towards the dinosaurs, all the torture and total lack of any kind of respect in interaction of these animals was really bothering me as the movie spun out. About half-way through, my heart just broke with it, and I was leaden with the spectacle of abuse and complete callousness perpetrated by the humans. I started to cry a little. It was awful. The connection that I was heartbroken about the dinosaurs in front of me and also heartbroken and horrified by my own fellow humans in real time was not lost on me in the moment. I just felt all the dark weight of where we are right now as a society and a species and I was just completely grossed out.

But as Leonard Cohen says, ‘there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in..” and that is the real truth. In having my heart break last night and this past week, and being a part of humanity that is also heartbroken by this atrocious behavior in stealing children from their families, I woke up this morning and sat down to write this story about JP Parr in a more vulnerable state. In watching JP speak about her experience with asking and giving help I am reminded that that is where hope lives, in how we continue to help each other when someone is in need. That our greatest strength is in our most fragile state, when we are in need we express that we are weak and reach out. When someone else reaches out to us, you remember how scary that was, and we help them become stable in the moment. This is where humanity redeems itself over and over. This is where our destructive impulses are balanced by our compassionate care-taking of others. This dynamic is what I believe in and keeps me from despairing over humanity and my place in it.

So thank you JP Parr for reminding me of the power in asking and giving help, that this is where we as humans redeem ourselves everyday.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

This is Trixie Little. She is a queen. Literally in her artistic career, she was crowned the Queen of Burlesque, Miss Exotic World 2015. She also evokes the archetype Queen as she is a leader that commands her space in every endeavor, graceful and articulate when under fire, lion hearted as she calls her people into the action of her convictions.

Please follow this link to Trixie’s full length interview:

http://vimeo.com/274777659

Trixie has recently gone on a journey deep into the shadow of loss.  To paraphrase her words, loss in everything that gave her a sense of place and security in this world; her positive professional standing in a certain community of American professional burlesque, her home, her city, her partner, certain friends, social-political identity, being injured in a car accident. Trixie has endured a trial by fire, and again in her words, an online social media witch hunt in which her defense of a fellow member of the NYC cabaret and burlesque community sparked an immediate uproar of online attack on her personal character that led to an almost immediate expulsion from her performance community and loss of her career in NY.

I believe that Trixie herself can best explain her life experience and call to action that she is now compelled to act in response to this intensity. If you are interested in the details of this specific situation and how Trixie is activating her own artistic movement in response, please follow this link to a video that Trixie herself has published:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnxFSbULedw

I lived and photographed and performed in a circus/performance art community that overlapped with Trixie’s in New York and met and knew her briefly before life called me elsewhere and I left NY for New Orleans at the end of 2014. I had recently heard that Trixie had moved to Los Angeles and when I was spending some winter months in Palm Springs this past year, I thought of Trixie and what I had heard and seen online in social media of her life experience and I knew I wanted to interview her for The Nature Of Refuge when I came to LA. Trixie’s willingness to share her truth and her extreme vulnerability in her current life situation, impressed me deeply. To feel as if you have lost everything and to stand in front of the madding crowd and tell your story with an open vulnerable heart, that is a testament to great courage in my opinion. That bravery made me want to add Trixie’s voice to this specific project’s chorus of the effects of fear and what we as American women do with our fears. Whether we do or do not establish safety, for ourselves and others.

Another aspect that drew me to Trixie was the fact that she had created a truck-house as well and experienced it as a refuge – just like me! I was curious how another woman experienced living out of her truck and made it special and felt safe in that relatively exposed space. There is something very specific about living out of a vehicle for an extended period of time. Whether you find yourself in an urban or rural environment, you can never take any of your daily self care or truck care for granted; you have to be present to every action you take. Where are you going to brush your teeth, where are you going to poop, is it time for an oil change, is this a safe street to park on, should you bring your computer with you for safekeeping, where am you going to boil your breakfast eggs, dang your phone died! etc…. How did this other woman navigate all that stuff? I was curious and felt a kinship. Trixie doesn’t live in her truck anymore since arriving to LA six months ago but her truck is still her safe place, her “clubhouse” as Trixie says.

There are many things that intrigued me in hearing Trixie’s story but something that stood out strongly was the the legacy that we women have of bullying one another and playing at inclusion and ostracizing as power plays in our intro-personal dynamics. Who doesn’t remember those childhood feminine playground games of the sacrificial lamb that was temporarily cast out of the group, then invited back in to in turn, take part in the ostracization of a former tormentor. Or some variation of that power dynamic between female children. We learn it as a cruel tool at a young age as a function of the group balancing out power.  We play it out as adults to devastating results. The online culture of trolling, shaming, and shunning through social media is one that is shared indiscriminately between genders and all self identification, and I personally find it disturbing and wonder at its value as a social phenomenon.  To me, there is a difference between social debate and discourse to the verbal mob mentality that seems to catch fire so quickly between differences of opinion online these days.

I am interested in a revolution fueled by passionate, articulate, motivated Love. I believe in our collective social strength powered and empowered by compassion, empathy, and patience with one another. Taking the time to understand where the other is coming from so we can find common ground and rocket to a future together based on a commitment of inclusion and respect of all of our differences while acknowledgment that those differences exist and what makes us interesting to one another. A trick that we are all struggling with right now as Americans.

Trixie Little through her recent experiences in loss, has been galvanized into an artistic action in response to her cabaret/burlesque community based on the wild heart of love and risk that is the core of any self expression of truth of the human experience. I find Trixie’s journey of defining integrity and with it, creative power, to be empowering to witness.

I invite you to view the videos of Trixie Little’s exploration of vulnerability and self empowerment and find a connection to your own definition of integrity in the face of hardship.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marilyn Luna.

Isn’t that name just everything? Marilyn informed me when I told her that I thought she had such a romantic name, that ‘Luna’ is a more common surname in the desert.

“Of course it is and there’s nothing regular about it, ” I thought in return.

Luna is a word of the desert; round, high, and mysterious. This woman is yet to learn her full Luna magnitude, she is seeking and feeling out her horizon.  An individual on the cusp of leaving young womanhood behind and stepping into the experience of being fully ‘Woman’, Its exciting and tender to behold this Luna rising.

I met Marilyn working at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs and in the first couple weeks of working there, I came in one morning and Marilyn honored me by opening her heart up and spontaneously got real. She spoke with vulnerability on how she was feeling shame in not take care of her spirit, not honoring herself with choices she was making in life. Marilyn confided in me, reached out and transcended the moment by transforming  it from a mundane, “Hey, whats happening” moment at the beginning of a workday, to one of true compassionate communication. Marilyn revealed herself to me and in doing so she illuminated a gorgeous light on herself that made me want to interview her for this project. By holding out what she perceived as weakness, Marilyn impressed me and made an impression, I wanted to know more about her truth.

To view Marilyn’s full length interview, please follow this link and enjoy:  https://vimeo.com/271195571

At the end of my time in Palm Springs last month, Marilyn and I finally connected for her interview and I took her took one of my favorite sanctuaries I had discovered while I was there. Its an abandoned golf course going dry and brown and wild without constant attention and watering; the desert is quick to reclaim its own out there in deep quiet savagery.

During our interview, Marilyn spoke of her readiness to ask for help from an emerging place of actually wanting to change her emotional circumstances instead of solely seeking sympathy. I believe that is an incredibly important distinction and to take notice in the break of previous motivation. This is a leap from one state of being to a whole new level of emotional intelligence; willing to do what it takes to obtain wisdom. And that’s exciting to observe in another person, that moment of understanding that a whole new set of emotional action is needed to evolve and guide a person to the next level of maturity. To expand as a human being instead of falling into the trap of contraction.

To be there as a witness as Marilyn is starting to understand and apply this, was a total honor. This specific experience with interviewing this woman was a moment for me to ‘pay it forward’. When I was just about the exact same age as Marilyn,  I had a person come into my life that facilitated a similar truth that coincided with the sensation that the universe reached out and hit me on the head with an emotional hammer. It woke me up to that I had to radically alter my approach to how I navigated myself through the world ground floor up, I had to do this if is was to honor myself and thrive instead of fundamentally wither. I witness Marilyn having a similar crossroads experience in her emotional development and I see her with just a little nudge and a whole lot of love from the people in her life, crossing that threshold into full, intelligent, present womanhood with flying colors. Marilyn is already there, she just is in the process of opening her eyes.

Marilyn is articulate and passionate and aware. She uses words well and with care and claims Writer as her vehicle of self expression. Marilyn has kindness and generosity and helps the people around her and both her and her husband are committed to the assistance of those in need. Marilyn has a wonderful smile and laugh and the pleasure I took in her company and intelligence is immense.

The honor in her sharing her heart with me and my opportunity to share some of Marilyn’s story and her understanding of her own emotional responsibility, is just fantastic. This is what makes this journey and meeting these women and this work all worth it.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

What do you do when you are a young mystic in our American culture, where do you learn what you are?

One of the dictionary definitions of a mystic –

“A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.”

You grow up aware, hyper-sensitive, turn inward as your intricate inner world of divine sensations is seemingly yours alone. No one has guided you through the ultimate reality of inter-connectivity. No one has taught you that you are one of the guide mirrors placed in our human reality, meant to reflect that we are all together in this, that no one is alone. We are forever with everything around us. But no one has taught us our purpose, no one has said,

“Hey you! You are a guide!  I will help you enter into your power so that you in turn can witness and teach the spirit wisdom and its woven reality to form.”

 

And so the average American mystic is left up to her own devices and feels utterly isolated and alone and becomes sad a lot of the times in that sensation of aloneness. So alien though, this solitary experience when her purpose to be is the connective force. The mystic does have a purpose in being and if that imperative is not identified, what do you do with the blindness to the true self? The endless restless sensations of almost there, almost can see around the corner, almost can catch It behind you or from the corner of the eye.

What Is It?

The truth of ones power and that you know you are different from everyone around you. So, you have nightmares and visions growing up. Omens and mythology comes naturally to you, they resonate as a sensible form of communication. Supernatural is something you innately recognize as your working reality and wish you could confide about in and be taken seriously.

The wind speaks across the desert and the windmills turn and answer and the mountain sits and listens and the hot dry sun beckons and silences simultaneously. It wasn’t until you were a little older that you realized that you were the only one, the only human one that was taking part in that conversation.

But you are not the only one, just one of a small group in the midst of millions.

In feeling extraordinary emotion not only emanating from yourself, but all the living beings around you, how do you protect yourself, why do you need to protect yourself? Because no one was there to teach you how to enter into that flow gracefully and take on the role of conduit without drowning in sensation. How do you teach yourself that as a child and is it inevitable that you just surrender to drowning?

Visions of ravens and seeing far into the desert horizons, wild young thing and your cellular understanding of true freedom. Buy the motorcycle, take the wind by the teeth and fly.

The young are obsessed with Why? Why? Why? Everything must have purpose and meaning and explanation to prove its valid existence, more wild appetite and consumption of information – tell me! Couple this with the widest net of collecting sensation that the mystic comes into the world with, you’ve got a rich nervous stew of perception that trembles in raw awareness.

Where is the mentor, the teacher at this precipice of coming of age?

Its not until you are older that you understand that it is predominately Is Is Is with life and all its experiences, the why not so important for justification, the why more of a rich delight of exploration and possibility. Not mandatory to define ones sensory experience by, but a rich reward of intelligence and consciousness. The why because more sophisticated in its less hurried exploration.

It’s a hard way to learn, seemingly alone to come into ones purpose to teach the singular human that her sense of self will not be lost in connectivity but amplified in a chorus of the universe’s delight in itself. How does the young American mystic survive the sensation of strange isolation to mature into becoming a teacher of connection?

Depression, anxiety, drugs, sex, adventure.

All quite dramatic and full of sensation that the mystic can and does amplify without most of time, knowing that she is turning something already quite intense up to 11. All that latent power and nothing seemingly on the surface to do with it. These all are valid teachers yes, but hard ones, suffering seems to be the natural outcome and with suffering if she survives it, often comes wisdom and self awareness. Then the awareness of her true nature and power will also hopefully blossom and come to fruition. Is usually takes some pretty hard knocks to open one’s eyes to the truth about one’s mystic self.

The Hero’s Journey, The Alchemist.

Please watch Stephanie’s full interview here http://vimeo.com/264531226

There is a danger though as a woman mystic in navigating all this in a male dominated culture. When she is seeking, when she is alone with her eyes still closed, the mystic is desperate for help and justification of feeling so lost. We live in a world that is deeply fearful of the power and magic of women, men have created millennia of myths turned into religion that always tells of the evil stain of a woman’s integral power. With a female mystic having innate understanding of the rhythm of myth’s language coupled with the heightened power she has come into the world with, a man’s religion may seem the answer. Men love absolutes and having only two options; success or failure, reward and punishment, do or die. Be careful of creationism and the myths that justify the punishment of women. We suffer more than men not because we deserve it, but because men are frightened of us and our power and punish us for their reactive fear. Take it all with a grain of salt and continue to listen to what resonates with you.

Interconnectivity is your safe harbor and cultivating your relationship with your power to conduct pure energy and give it definition is your home. To hold that power loosely and with love, with your very existence and ability to communicate your extra sensory experience to others with clarity and conviction, that is your safety net.

The very thing that frightens you as no one has been able to help shape it and give it form – as there is no mystic school in our country –  is the very thing that is your bedrock of faith. You are allowed and encouraged to create your own language with and through it and then share it, plant those seeds and watch them grow. Grow strong alongside those seeds in your ability to communicate the reality of Mystery in our human experience coupled with practical reality, its the paradox of existence and it is juicy.

Young American Mystic, you are real and you are safe in your becoming, in owning your own wonderful, strange self.

This is the nature of refuge.

Its been an unexpected 3 months to say the least here in Palm Springs, but as a good friend said,

“Not a bad place to spend the winter.’

Simplicity in that statement.

I arrived here at the end of 2017 it is now the third  month of 2018 and I thought I’d be here around a month, I was mistaken. But I am doing exactly what I predicted before I left Washington and started this journey – I told others and myself when they asked the question about money and funding this work, what would I do?

I responded, “When I run out of money I stop where I am and work and then move on when I am able.”

Also simplicity in that statement.

I further explained that I didn’t have much of a preconceived agenda in how or where I went with The Nature Of Refuge, I would really just let the weather dictate where I went as not to get too hot or too cold in my travels and let the work itself connect the dots and set the pace.

It’s doing exactly that and this particular slice of desert is really the only spot in the US besides Florida, to spend the winter outside in any capacity and be comfortable.

So, coming to Palm Springs when I sensed I was about to run out of funds and then having that actually happen, the stress of that. Job seeking and shooting the occasional commercial gig and art modeling, having that not be enough. Getting really sick for a month, going to the ER and then going through all my reserves, having my truck break down and manifest some major repair needs before I could get back on the road, maxing out my first credit card and learning about that. Panicking about all of this and going into a tailspin for a minute – this was all a part of my grand design to begin with and all I have been doing was living up to each one of my expectations of myself.

The thing is, I also had and have an expectation of myself to simultaneously and radically alter my dependence on the pendulum sensation between abundance and scarcity as my rocket fuel. That addiction to panic in response to the building an imaginary wall of failure behind me and backing myself up to it time and time again has run its course, or my fascination with it has finally waned. I want with all of myself to let go of the identification with the survivor mind set and enter fully into the awaiting reality of continuous abundance, be that material or spiritual.

And I want that to happen now.

I am a very impatient individual.

I am also still wrestling with my ego and the need to control and forcing my agenda when force and control are completely uncalled for.

So of course all of the challenges that were happening in the last couple of months and my resulting panic spiking, was completely unwarranted and seemingly unnecessary. But there was the necessity of me truly reconnecting with the present moment and letting go of my scheming and planning for the future and the only thing that finally got my full attention was the spike of seeming disaster and my overwhelming panic response that overloaded me and shocked me into the present moment completely. Emptying me out and calling my full attention once again, to the reality that I have no control, there is no agenda even in the midst of great creative and spiritual output, and to slow the fuck down, stop.

This forced me to stop spinning my wheels in chaotic emotional response to challenges in circumstance.

For a few weeks, I took ten minutes at a time, the mantra of existing in the next ten minutes, that’s all that concerns me. It worked and I was soothed. It’s all that is real anyway.

During this time period I got a call from The Ace Hotel, a local cool kids destination boutique hotel chain with an outpost here in the desert. I had applied there on a whim when I first got into town but with no real response and no real interest on my part, I hadn’t really thought about it again. When Ace called me I had literally two dollars in my bank account and a maxed out credit card and an injured truck and psyche taking 10 minutes of my existence at a time. I had had a phone conversation with a dear friend who was helping in talking me down off the ledge so to speak and she believed that I could still devote all of myself to the project in the midst of all this upheaval, stay true to the work and have faith. Also practically not to waste my energy on looking for a service job and the added frustration of that but if something dropped in my lap, by all means take it and use it as a tool to aid my creative endeavors. Good advice and the next day Ace called me and it felt like a gift and all part of this serendipitous care-taking that the universe has wrapped me in in these last couple of years.

A punch in the jaw and an immediate hand stretched out to help me up. It’s a funny image but a true one and I am certain that magic and my faith in it are actively at work and intertwined strengthened by each other. So I keep getting up by taking that hand. This is fascinating juicy stuff.

Ah but my ego and working at The Ace Hotel!

I am serving poolside while the sun and the kickass soundtrack spilling from the speakers along with drinks and nice asses roll around the pool. I’m hustling drinks, running my own cute ass off and making mad money while the season is high. My ego does not like it one bit,

“Service industry, again?”

“Yuck!”

“I’m an Artist!” It says in self-righteousness, “What are we doing here??”

“Can it.” I respond. “We need the money honey.”

It is a serious hustle out there, too much to do, too much ground to cover, too many people, too hot, but I am making mad cash everyday. My body and mind hurt at the end of each day and I soothe my ego with the reminder that this will enable me to be on the road doing The Nature Of Refuge for some months comfortably and that fact and connecting with these women is the only thing that matters and far more important than my ego. I meditate and move and release my energy that The Ace is generating that feels toxic but I am still creating an anxiety mind stream about the place and experience and already having anxiety dreams about the work one month in. My skin itches all the time, which has always been a major signifier of my stress levels, and I am sleeping restlessly.

“Its worth it,” I whisper to myself and the thing of it is, that its true.

I am still in the midst of my sacred creative center; it is with me wherever I go. I am still engaged with and observing the women around me, I will be interviewing two of my co workers this week that have that light around them that attracts me to their stories of vulnerability and connection. Each time I speak of this work, extraordinary conversation and compassionate listening and speaking occurs. It astounds me these past 5 months what these beautiful women share with me with such articulate vulnerability and emotion. Affirmation that everything is worth this project is revealed to me everyday.

Take this experience for example. Last week there was this lovely couple that were staying at the hotel for a few days and each day I was out working the pool, they were also out relaxing and enjoying themselves. They immediately made a point of connecting with me and telling me how cute and thoughtful they felt I was and we struck up a professional friendship the duration of their stay. After a few days of this, the more talkative woman of the pair started asking me questions about my life and what I thought of Palm Springs and what my interests were. I told her about The Nature Of Refuge and the fact I was slowly making my way across the country interviewing American women about their experiences with safety and vulnerability and what the concept of sanctuary meant to them. This woman was immediately quite curious and responsive, she and her wife were Canadian and on a much needed vacation and she started sharing with me a story of such grief and loss in such a graceful matter-of-fact manner that only added to the depth of her story. This woman, let’s call her Miss Fab, started talking about how my work intrigued her, the conversation of feeling unsafe as a woman because she was feeling unsafe in her body in response to the medical community due to the fact that she and her wife had just lost their newborn son. He died due to medical negligence in the hospital care of their child a few days after he was born. He had died this past December and Miss Fab and her wife were traveling to help in some way with the grief. She went on to tell me the details of the hospital’s negligence, the fact that she was still lactating and as she put it, “ her body was still looking for her child’, the fact that her wife and her were actively choosing to draw closer through this ultimate nightmare of loss instead of being torn apart, how they were considering conceiving again and the worry and fear in making that decision. Miss Fab also showed me a photo of her son, Huxley, before he died, he of course was beautiful.

 

So there I am, drinks tray in hand, being a witness to these women’s loss and pain and the honor of that moment was overwhelming and gave me literal shivers across my body. I told Miss Fab all this and she said the same was happening for her and I asked if I could hug her and she said yes. The pool scene buzzed around us and at some point one of my co workers had come over to tell me it was time to take my break which I ignored, this moment with this woman was everything, it was why I took that job to begin with, for that moment to reveal itself and all the other moments of true compassionate connection that will happen there in my time as an employee at The Ace. This is who I am now wherever I go, whatever environment, however I choose to spend my time in, I will be this cipher. It is an extreme honor and my calling, this is what I was made to do, be this witness and tell these stories.

Any twinge that my ego has in this point in time, is one to be ignored, ego twinges usually are best ignored or better yet, acknowledged, identified and then released. For me to revisit an environment that has always caused me great stress such as a service job, is a gorgeous opportunity to do my deep creative work in the midst of that anxiety. To learn and integrate that I am on my hero’s journey in every environment I place myself, that nothing is wasted and that failure is just is not an active reality at this point.

Fear of failure is not the rocket fuel, authentic connection is what propels me now. Over and over I am here to learn and integrate that truth, I hope I truly understand that fact and transform my emotional hardwiring before I die.

So thank you Ace Hotel for all that you are providing right now. I can’t quite let go of my agenda of more fundraising plans and how I want to guide and share and cast a wider net with this work in the coming weeks, my ego and I are a work in progress always.

This journey with The Nature Of Refuge has only begun, it is a marathon not a sprint, I am seeking stories of sanctuary and our collective relationship with autonomy and connection, safety and violation and through listening I am learning my own experience with the inner sanctum of stability. In learning the contour of the shape of my own fears, I can hold greater space in witnessing the shape of others and there we can hold one another, stronger together than alone.

This is the nature of refuge.