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.