Healing Through Creativity

I am looking for a way out of this cycle.
I am searching for a beacon as I lay afloat this rocky ground.
I'm hoping to find a way to hear my story
and to share it with you
and to have you listen
and then I listen to you.

For at least 10 years I have struggled to make sense of my life, I have struggled to feel joy, I have struggled to see my successes.  I have been caught in a cycle of chronic discontent.  Lately, I have been thinking about how to heal myself and my life creatively.   I've also been thinking a lot about how I can make this blog more relevant and useful to others while using it to give me focus and utilize it as a space for me to document my progress in life.  And, so, I have decided to make a task here.  I will begin documenting my progress of healing through creativity.  It is my goal and intention to use creative expression as a way to discover myself.  It is additionally my goal and intention to integrate creative expression into my daily life, not as a career, not as a way to get attention, but as a way to enhance the quality of my life and the lives of others.  I will be seeking ways to bring creativity into the work that I do and into the play that I partake in.  I may do things that most of us consider creative, like dancing, singing, and drawing, but I'll also be doing things like making plant medicines and healthy foods, learning how to identify birds and bugs, and practicing communication skills.  The experiment is to find out how everyday life can be an opportunity to excel at our innate god-like ability to create joy, meaning and authenticity in our lives.  My objective is to unleash my potential by living my dreams one little step at a time.  My thesis: life is better when we are empowered to express ourselves creatively in all aspects of our lives.  Here I begin a new way.  The goal is opening my heart in order to hear my story, so that I can share it with you, so that you can listen and then I listen to you.

Here's to Ends and Beginings!

As I embark upon this creative journey, many things move and shift. More and more, my priorities become clear, my path becomes unveiled. It's funny how sometimes circumstances, which seem random, help to move things along. I spent the last few days working on realizing a project with a long time friend. Right as we were about to go out and do the real dirty work, things got dramatic and the whole thing was dropped, just like that. It was not a happy moment, but in the frustration and anger, the burning of these emotions, the unplugging of rancid investments, I was liberated. I have a big undertaking this weekend. It's a celebration of myself, my Muse and my path of creative service. It's a dedication through my modus vivendi of performance and art, which is my central calling. It's poetry, music, dance, ritual and theater, a small realization of my massive dreams. If I were still caught up in the toxic projects from earlier this week, I would not have been able to invest the time it is now taking me to make this event the meaningful and amazing jumping-off point it is meant to be. Likewise, in another unexpected twist, the circumstances of my life have forced me to downsize my event in a huge way. Rather than this being an unconqureable obstacle, it is pardoxically, an opportunity to realize something far more profound through imposed simplicity. Everything, like the magnificent embrace of intertwined tree trunks, is growing together, beautiful, awesome, seamless. I am truly blessed.

An Imaginary Friend Came for Tea

He took my eyes.  

"Because," he said, "Seeing doesn't give you Sight."

He put them in his pocket for safe keeping.

And now, I was under the influence of pure black.  My skin prickled every time he spoke, I could feel the caress of every word vibrate into my cells.  

"Listen quietly, my dear, and perhaps you'll come to know a small vestige of Truth."  

I nodded, then gasped.  My breath seemed to catch fire and blow out with every cycle.  I was afloat in infinite vitality.  There was a cool heat, radiating everywhere.  

He poured me a cup of licorice tea.  As I sipped, every droplet of that hot sweet liquid cast upon me a cataclysmic shudder, my heart leapt for the sounds of my swallows.

Silently, I gestured to him, hand reaching for his.  As his flesh met mine, I gripped and pulled him toward me.  I put my ear to his throat and listened for a rush of tea to drain, mouth to stomach, into his body.  The sound of it washed through me like the blue light of falling water.  The taste of it entered through my feet.  He and I were an obit of stars, our own separate Earths.  

It was then, I began to See.

The Salon Gets a Face Lift!... Sorta...

Dear fans and readers,

I've decided to dedicate this blog to the wanderings, meanderings, adventures, and explorations into my world of creation.  To translate, I will now focus entries on my creative work and that which lies within it's orbit.  Perhaps, I'll still throw in an occasional personal diatribe or rant on other goings on in my life, but for the most part, I want you and me to enjoy the pleasures and pains of my laborious journey into a life lived for art.  So, here we go!  The Siren is singing, let her reel you in!

Love and Light (and Midnight too!),

Mlle. Novadawn M.

Creativity Titer

The question has been, "HOW?".

Now that that's out of the way, I remain unsure of many things.  The titer has returned confirming a positive.  My immunity to creative death is strong!

I've been infused with the knowing once again.  I'm infected with a good disease, right to the core of my bones.

Creation Flows.

Yesterday, on the bus a rather strange woman invited me to a party.  She thought I looked down, but I was just tired.  I was good tired from the hard work of creation.  She saw books in my bag and asked me if it was science or history, or what it was that I was studying.  I told her it was singing, and performance and such creative things.  She said she wanted to be like me.  She asked me how.  It finally, truly made sense to me.

The answer is and always was, GO, DO!  It's sometimes called showing up.

Away with the intellectual pondering of potential and possibility.  Go into it with not a thought, but what to sing in this moment, or that.  It's not the song, it's the voice.  It was always the voice.  The voice alone is enough.

Donum of Vox Vocis ~ The Gift of Voice

Now I obsessively repeat, "Today is a good day to sing."  It's my mantra, my melody.

Now I step through every doorway of opportunity, and let it lead me into the mystery.

Tomorrow, I fly south to sing.  

Multiple Solitude? Alone-together?

Maybe it's not alone-together, it's more like isolated-and-lonely-together.  Stop and think about it.  When was the last time you actually LOOKED a stranger in the eyes, even when you really wanted to look?  No, you averted your eyes as soon as their gaze grazed you.  When was the last time someone offered to help you, to REALLY help you, when you were suffering, and I mean someone who wasn't your family member or really good friend?  No, they just stood there watching.  We're afraid of seeing one another, we're afraid of letting our guards down and of making the commitment to live life from the heart, to make real sacrifices for one another.  We are a world of beings playing out a disillusioned and moderate tragedy.  In love we temper ourselves, in politics we whine, in dreams we may fly, only to crash upon waking.  We cheapen our passions by consuming fantasies sold to us in an attempt to make us forget that we have the capacity to create so much of the world we live in.  Economics, nation states, religions; what a strange and convoluted, illusory real game of life, which man has so foolishly entangled himself in.  Even I play in this mummer's farce and I see beyond the veil of all this stupidity.  We really make things more difficult than they need to be.  We love a challenge, but would rather lay fallow and dead as we struggle.  Where is the fire of life?  Where is the passion of our hearts?  We second guess our every move, we over-analyze our choices, then idolize those who leap off the edge and land well, but it can't be us who jump.  We have no trust for others, because in our inability to accept our own role in the pain of our lives, we carry anger and blame and shame and all that crap which closes us off from real connections.  Authenticity is not a city we visit often.  We're suffocating under layers of player paint and the dung-masks of dogma.  Why do I shush myself when I was to sing-scream in the middle of the grocery store?  Why do I stop myself from dancing down the street while caressing the gentle hands of my fellow pedestrians?  I stop, I shush, because, no longer a child, my spirit has been suppressed by the dehydrated, blank, and catatonic despair of a population choked by the chains of the Meta-parent, the ultimate authority, be it God or Science or the State, that allows us to say, "It's not my fault!"  It is our fault!  We created this, we continue to create this, and we have the capacity to change it.  

What is a grown up person?  Is there such a thing as an adult, really?  I wonder, because it seems that we humans so badly need to create stories that keep us as children.  Not the children of loving parents who encourage us to dream and breathe and grow, but of parents who tyrannically control our every move and keep us from becoming beautifully independent, wise souls.  Why, as we age, do we let our lives become dross, colorless, and defeated?  Why do we so mindlessly devour the bland food of our romanceless culture decade after decade?  Why do we continue to rise only to our lowest of dreams?  Our world will stone, tar and feather, hang, or burn a person who lives an authentic life, and then make them heroes in their death.  What kind of necromantic story are we writing for ourselves?  If we cannot live in the ecstasy that the full spectrum of our capabilities as humans offers, what the hell is the point of bothering to exist? 

As we grow, as we age, we should find ourselves more alive, better able to express ourselves, more capable of manifesting our dreams, more inspired and clear.  We can only become such wise elders if we spiral through life's ups and downs, without allowing ourselves to stagnate and fester in one place for too long.  Our society, unfortunately, encourages this bogginess, and does not like it when we free ourselves from the sinkholes of despair.  When we know our own power, we cannot be controlled.

I demand a life of PASSION!  I take my life back from the mass boredom of everyday life and from the stranglehold of "power over".  I invite you to join me in creating a life you can truly love.  I invite you to join me in healing our multiple solitude, by remembering to play and gaze into the eyes of strangers.  I invite you to join me in trusting and giving generously and forgiving imperfections.  I invite you to join me in following our hearts and in shedding the garments of the false "authorities" found in government, religion, families, and other social institutions that have been built upon the fear of real freedom.  I invite you to join me in reclaiming the real magic of life and death and remembering the expansiveness of every last cell of our wildest dreams!

So Be It!

The Whiskers of Green Faeries!

It's amazing what a little booze can do to relax social inhibitions.  I watched my resentments, negative energies, and anger melt away as I shared far too many drinks with my current housemates recently.  It could have gone a completely different course, but it thankfully allowed me to remember their humanity and my own.  It started with whiskey and chocolate and oozed it's way to cool sips of spicy absinthe.  I was able to remember that sometimes the things that rub and irritate and chafe in life are really very small when you step outside yourself and see the beauty in all the crap.  Ultimately, we're all relieved that I'm moving out, because of the small things that have added up to create itches that are awful tedious to scratch, but I'm happy to know that it doesn't leave us with unfading pits and scars.  In the hours that we lost ourselves to the "Whiskers of the Green Faerie", we rebuilt our webs of connection, which all of us so deeply desire.  Though I woke up the next day, feeling a little beaten up, I was happy to know that while I leave a house, I keep the fire of friends and heart, to lighten the hearth of my new abode.  

Moving and Moving and Moving Again!

Ah!  I've made it almost 6 months!  I've clawed my way through to this moment, finding myself full of anger and resentment, mostly at me, for not standing up for myself, for not fighting back.  The day I moved in here, I felt unwelcome.  I thought, "Perhaps it will pass and things will get better."  Ever hopeful, that's me.  Well, better it did not get.  Worse it got, worse and worse and worser.  Now here I sit, anticipating a total revolution in my life.  I'm moving out of this prison house and into what I hope will be a more liberating and freeing social experiment.  I will begin a new home with strong and clear intentions.  I will begin a new romance in the same way.  I will begin my work as an artist in a way I never have before.  Everything is falling away on a grand scale and I'm letting it all come tumbling down.  As I claw my way through the rubble, I look to the truth of my heart to guide me through the rebuilding.  There are things I feel meant to do in this lifetime, many of which I've only scratched the surface.  Now I'm being called to live my life in a dramatically different way.  Dramatic it is!  I'm being called to trust in time, in space, in the unknowns of life more than ever before.  I am stepping into uncharted territory, and I'm finding it both exhilarating and contracting.  Despite the contradictory and paradoxical nature of my situation, I feel utterly compelled to dive right in.  I can't seem to stop myself.  My friend said recently, about my current happenings, that he thinks there is too much changing all at once, and that I will probably drop some projects from all the pressure.  I countered that I've been under even more stress in the past and came through it all, having accomplished all of my goals, only slightly modifying a few of them in the process.  No, I won't have to drop any of these "projects" as he calls them, it's the stress that feeds me and pushes me to move through.  These are merely labor pains.  In the end, I get a brand new life, more unbelievable, more amazing than the last.  I'm finally in the birth process.  I've died, I've replanted, I've ripened, now I let forth this new life.  So Be It!

A Fall of Dreams

Through a window

I watch the day pass

Leaves turn red as blood, golden, brown

Cool air brings a rust upon the world

The sky, blue against it

A dream seeks me out

As I lay, with a head of fog

Joints unmoved, aching

The walls muffle the rustle of leaves

No, I can't even hear them

My dream, he floats 

Much like the leaves on the wind

Then, he falls quickly

And smashes to the ground

There's blood at the corners

I get to keep a piece of it, the wing

Three feathers to be exact

Two plain, one like a peacock's

Only they're the Raven's

Or Maldoc's, as he claims

I cuddle my treasure

Leaves still ride the air

Cracking against the wind

I don't know how to mend it

The wires need to be set again

The dream, he arises

Broken from the fall

Held together like the dying leaves

Wind pushing his wings

Coaxing them to release

I lay here, watching

Autumn embrace upon my world

The sun play upon the colors

And he perches, out there

Watching my little jerks

There's a strange chord

That ties us 

It binds us unknowingly

And we fall together

Our wings help us to fly

Am I My Own Worst Enemy?

What sparks this question is the 8 of Swords.

This card popped up in a reading recently, and sparked a rather strong reaction in me.  Like any metaphoric system, there are multiple interpretations to be had.  However, the most important one's are those with personal significance, the one's that speak to us in a language we are able to receive and understand.  With this in mind, I wish to explore the significance this card holds for me.

So, let's begin with the number.  Eight is a numerological symbol for power.  Some sources have a materialistic take on it, interpreting it as a number of material wealth, business acumen, and positions of authority, while forgetting more esoteric significances.  Eight can also symbolize the joining of the above and the below.  Turned on it's side, the eight is the sign for infinity.  While the materialistic interpretation has a value of it's own, I'm more privy to the arcane interpretations.  The fusion of spirit ("above") and matter ("below") is the work of the magician or alchemist.  Through the process of this "Great Work", one discovers the source of true power (the ability see beyond illusion/delusion, manifest through Will, serve as conduit to the Divine, etc.).  Thus eight, is a symbol for the achievement of true power (which is not power over, but power within).

The suit of swords in the tarot represents the intellect and the air element.  The eight paired with the swords indicates a relationship between power and mind.  It asks us to ponder what purpose intellect serves in the wielding of true power.  It warns us that the mind when given credence over the heart, only serves to bind, blind and banish us from our power (see the woman in the card).  This is not to downplay the importance of the intellect.  On the contrary, it serves a very important role in our ability to discern, critique, explore and understand.  However, for true self discovery and empowerment to occur, the mind must work in service to the heart (otherwise defined as intuition, Holy Spirit, Chante (Lakota), etc.).  It is through the heart that we receive pure guidance (inner knowing) from our essential selves.  The fusion of the above and the below takes place at the heart center.  It is here that intellect and emotion meet to share their respective observations and information so that one can act consciously from the heart.  

Considering the above, we can see that the eight of swords card is a symbol for powerlessness caused by intellectual beliefs.  In other words, the state of powerlessness shown is merely an illusion of the mind, choice still exists, it's simply unacknowledged.  The woman in the card is bound and blindfolded, barren and barred.  However, the way in front of her is clear and she has the freedom of movement in her feet.  A trickle of water lays a path for her.  The water being a symbol for emotion, gives her the encouragement to feel her way out of her predicament.  To be freed, she must loose the shackles of the intellect, allow her emotions to flow and will the two to meet in a moment of self-realization.  She has been party to her own oppression all along.  She has created many of these limitations for herself by buying into dis-empowering messages, external and internal alike.  On the other hand, some of the limitations have likely been imposed upon her from outside sources and are out of her control.  However, the point is not where the limitations originated, but what she perceives as her level of choice in the situation.  The better she can recognize what is, the better she can recognize the what kind of power she has to shift her circumstances.  This is the number eight, this is the magical act of grounding intent through the use of Will.  So, does she choose to give in to the limitations or use her creative spirit to find ways around, through, and beyond them?  Does she choose to activate her latent emotions and give them as much import as her fear-filled, dominating mind?  Is she what stands in her way? 

Alas, I must ask myself these very same things.  When considering these questions in the context of the intellect I must be careful not to negate the hard reality of social inequities that exist outside of my immediate control.  That said, I am challenged to see how, in my beliefs about myself and the world, I disallow myself a better life.  To tell the truth, my life isn't all that bad, especially when compared to many of my fellow relations, but subjectively speaking, I'm not fulfilled.  My dreams seem forever unattainable and I feel powerless for it.  But, perhaps I have fallen victim to my own lack of faith and my unwillingness to call up the creative forces innate in me to solve the riddle of my bindings.  It's difficult to put a mirror to one's mind, to deconstruct those brilliantly laid internal stories, in order to really see what's going on.  I've already asked myself what I want.  I know what I want.  Now, I just have to see what's standing in my way.  I have feeling that, as I lift my blindfold, I'll discover many faces of me staring back.  It's just a matter of convincing them that I know what needs to happen, that I've got it straight from the Source, and that they've got nothing to worry about.  Well, it's easier said than done, isn't it?  Or is that just a good example of how my mind is tricking my heart?

The Self Beyond

In the last three years or so, the Universe (or whatever you like to call the all encompassing Creative Force) has put me to the task of asking myself a few little questions:

"What do I really want?"

"What is my true essence?"

"Who the hell am I, really?"

"Will I show up (as my dad likes to call it) or will I stay asleep in the painful illusion that sleeping is easier than being fully awake?"

Yep, it's fun times in my head and heart these days! These questions are big, and when I began to be confronted with them, I both enthusiastically and reluctantly ventured to explore them. Deep self-exploration is not an easy road, after all, the most meaningful and adventurous ones rarely are, but the rewards are unquantifiable. This morning, I spoke with one of my great friends and teachers, and she said that being fully authentic is much like being a ring-bearer... being like Frodo. There's a weightiness to coming into true power, which is what "seeing the self beyond the veil" or being who YOU are, is all about. There are massive obstacles created by ourselves and our world, that must be overcome. There are temptations to abuse the power of self-realization to further our self-interests, instead of sharing it for the benefit of all. The journey to our highest potentials is often obscured by fears, conscious and unconscious alike. However, we are not alone in this journey, once we commit to it. This is a good thing, a very good thing. Just as in the story of Frodo and the ring, we must accept support. Though we may have to carry the bulk of the burden, we always have a Samwise (even if he's non-corporeal) and at least a handful of others willing to see us through the fire. On my current journey, many wonderful supporters have worked hard to give me the love and encouragement required to press forward. For this, I'm thankful. Unfortunately, I've also had a handful of Boromir's in my life. Those well-meaning loved-one's who are too blinded by their own fears and/or agendas to give me the objective and unconditional support I need (everyone needs). Other's agendas and fears along with my own investment in them, have helped only in feeding my resistances and self-delusions. These relationships have kept me down, instead of giving me the uplift I need. I don't mean to blame others for my shortcomings, but I do wish to acknowledge how certain relationships can seem beneficial, whist carrying the insidious poisons to destroy, or at least to keep one stuck. Despite all the support I speak of here, it is entirely up to me to decide whether I take on the task of living an authentic life, following my passions, sharing my gifts, and showing up. This is the challenge I have accepted. Although, I have answers to some of the questions above, I won't bother to share them here. The answers change and grow, they shift their focus as I journey forward, and they don't necessarily make logical sense. For this reason, I can only accept the feeling of these answers, the essences. My self beyond the veil is the key to all I am. That self is ever-changing, ever the same. The key is trusting in the essence.