Lila Downs, Rudoplph Valentino and the Monarch Butterflys

In the last week or two the monarch butterflies have been making their way down here. Before we moved in August I had my eye on a patch of milkweed in my garden back in Maine, looking for the caterpillars that would soon be hatching out to begin their long journey south to Mexico by the end of October. Such a long way for such little bodies with papery wings to go. But so important that they arrive! In Mexico, the arrival of the monarchs means that the souls of the dead are returning back again, in time for the most beautiful and important holiday of the year, Dia de los Muertos. I keep smiling as I see their fluttering golden selves pass over the highways and through the neighborhoods, potentially bearing precious invisible spiritual cargo.

Last night I went to the best party that I have been to in L.A. yet, (not that I have really been to many others...), but maybe for the first time ever I was really able to fully enjoy and connect to an event that was completely and totally L.A. This couldn't have happened the same way anywhere else. It was the Dia de Los Muertos celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. First of all, it wasn't the real Dia de Los Muertos, which is actually November 2nd, the same as All Saints Day on the Anglo-Catholic calendar. I think that they may have held it a week early so as not to conflict with some more traditional events. In any case though, Dia de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead is a traditional Mexican holiday wherein it is believed that the spirits of our ancestors can come back for one night to visit us and once again enjoy some of the pleasures of the material world. Families construct alters in their homes or at the cemeteries, and eat and drink and make merry by dead family members' graves. The alters are full of photos of the loved ones, candles and fresh baked sweet bread, "pan de los muertos", to symbolize the sweetness of this life, fresh flowers, to symbolize it's beauty and brief, passing nature, and often incense, liquor, specially prepared dishes, cigars, and other things that the dead relatives would have enjoyed on earth and would like to have again for the festive celebration. Alters and the ground around them are strewn with marigolds, or "flor de los muertos" to help guide the spirits back home. Streets, homes and places of business are decorated with papel picado, colorful tissue paper with skulls and skeleton images meticulously cut out of it. Children decorate and eat skulls made of sugar. There are processions in the streets with brass bands and people dressed up and dancing in crazy skeleton outfits. Skeleton puppets and dioramas enact scenarios of life after death. Skeletons drinking and dancing in a cantina, getting married, walking in the park with their babies, doing just about everything that we do in life, but with permanent grins on their bony faces and a very laissez-faire attitude about being dead. I love it. I looooove Day of the Dead! I love that idea, that the dead aren't gone from us forever. They just live in another place and we can still spend time with them once in a while, they are still part of our lives. I also love the making light of death, laughing in it's face while at the same time accepting it and welcoming it in as a normal part of life, like everything else that we do. I mean, why not?

We used to have Day of the Dead parties back in Maine, and build an alter in my friend Pam's apartment. I hosted a few times in my house way out in the woods. I have never really lived before in a city though where a large portion of the population celebrates this holiday. Last night we were a few souls in a teeming crowd of revelers trying to get into the cemetery. Lots of Hollywood hipsters and goths got on their best clubbing skeleton outfits, and many Mexican families went as calacas themselves, from grandpa all the way down to the baby in a little black onesie with white bones on it. Hollywood Forever, the hosting venue, is a big cemetery right next to Paramount Studios where famous movie business folks are buried. Dr Phil is apparently filmed next door. We walked by the entrance for his studio audience as we and the many skeletons streamed by. Inside Rudolph Valentino has a huge white mausoleum surrounded by a moat on which candle lit skeletons on rafts were floating around. While the Hollywood Forever version of the Day of the Dead is somewhat commercialized, there are many delicious food vendors and incredible artisans, and some of the alters and calacas are as much art exhibit as they are tribute to the dead, or maybe just art as a tribute to the dead, in any case it was full of all kind of L.A.ers, and it was truly full of beauty and fun and music and an honest spirit of appreciation for the holiday.

We wandered past amazing alter after amazing alter, (If you go to my facebook page you can see the album. Get ready, I took a lot of alter photos!). A band and procession of dancing skeletons passed us by. We ate cheesy tamales and spicy beef soft tacos with cilantro and crisp cinnamon sugar cookies. The incredible smells of sage and pungent herbal incense and grilling beef and roasting churros filled the air. There was a stage with really fun bands, and the main act of the night was one of my favorite musicians, Lila Downs, accompanied by a very cool video montage of Mexican political propaganda art and scenes of food and life. She is almost too cool for words to describe, but her refrain, "...en este mundo material, solamente pasajeros," kind of says it all. Or maybe it was, "Dicen que la fiesta, torito se habe que mal." I am so glad that I got to go to this fiesta!

Rain and Wrens

I can't believe it is Wednesday. It has been one of those times lately where suddenly I look up and I just don't have quite enough time to do everything that needs doing, much less reflect and come up with something intelligent or insightful to say. I'll try to at least skim the surface though, and maybe some wisdom will float to the top.

This period of busyness started last week with an incredible rainstorm. It was the first time that it had rained since we arrived here, and the last time we'd seen rain since somewhere around Nashville a couple of months ago on our trip out here. It wasn't just a shower either, it was a deluge for over 24 hours. In a dry place like this you can almost feel the hills exhale with relief when it rains. Even though it hasn't dipped below 60 people hesitate to drive and go around wearing winter parkas and fur lined boots. (Silly, huh Mainers?) Now a week later what were once dry patches of dust are now covered in tender green shoots. Everything smells fresh after the rain, the eucalyptus and rosemary more fragrant. Also, the rain (briefly) cleans the smog out of the air here. The morning after the rain you can see the mountains in the distance from downtown. You can see everything! L.A. is almost transformed into another city, sparkling and clean. The veil of pollution that usually clouds up our long distance vision is washed away for a day or two, and we can appreciate the basin of angels, between the mountains and the sea, filled with streets lined with bouganvillia and palm trees and dreamers. Rain here is pretty special to say the least.

Just after the rain I woke up for several mornings in a row to the call and then the busy little image of a house wren flitting around my back yard with her tail set at a jaunty angle, cheerfully and chattily going about her business. Setting a good example for me. And busy we have been with work and school and home and trying to dig ourselves into a life and community and survive the winds of fate in these uncertain times. I did find time to paint her image though.

I guess one thing I have reflected on somewhat this week is how much the painting of these images helps me. It gives me incredible joy, and when doing it I am immersing myself in the characteristics that I see embodied in the creatures that I am painting. I call these animal icons, because they are inspired by icons that I have seen growing up in the Catholic Church and in my travels in Latin America and Eastern Europe. I love to stand in far flung churches and admire the many beloved, beatified faces lit by votives. An icon is an image of the divine, usually believed to have protective and miraculous powers. I've read stories somewhere of icons that turn away hoarding armies, heal the sick and maimed, and many other amazing things. I don't think that my icons can do anything like that,....but who knows, maybe we just haven't had any hoarding armies to try it out on! In any case though, if the wren helps remind me to be cheerful in my busyness and to be hopeful for prosperity and success in my life, then that is kind of the same thing as support and protection.

May your saints come to visit and protect you as often as mine fly into my yard and life.

The Wilshire Blvd Dove

(Written Friday night.) Last week on a rare windy day Tim happened upon a baby pigeon fallen from the nest and sadly huddled in a doorway all alone. He was moved to pity and scooped it up into a box and brought it home. Now we have a pigeon. It was a forlorn and subdued little creature, and I thought for sure that it would probably soon pass from this world. Shannon asked over the phone if it was cute and we had to admit that no, he isn't cute. He's pretty ugly, with bald patches and whispy yellow baby feathers sticking out between the big grey feathers and these bald lumps on either side of his head that I'm assuming are his ears. He's no looker for sure but he's docile and sweet. Thanks to google we soon had a plethora of scientific, mythological, historical and practical information about pigeons throughout the ages and we decided to try to feed him some cooked corn. He's too young to know how to eat solid food by himself, but when I hold him and open his little beak and put the corn in it goes down no problem. We fed him a handful which he thankfully swallowed and he made it through the night to our surprise. The next day we opened the box and he peeped for more. He was dirty and covered with disgusting big black mites so Tim washed him. Now he's fluffy and clean and mite free. During the course of the week he has grown and gotten new feathers and aside from a droopy eyelid incurred when one of the dachsunds snapped at his head, he is looking pretty good. Almost cute! Sort of. He sits in a box on a clean towel and dozes or peeps and flaps excitedly whenever we come near. He seems to be thriving!

There's a dove thriving in our house. We are caring for it when it was abandoned in the cold world. This seems an auspicious arrival in some ways, especially in our recent times of disappointment and financial worry. Ok, it's a pigeon, not the white variety with the olive branch in it's mouth, but a pigeon is a member of the genus Columbidae all the same, and they are intelligent birds that have served mankind for ages. There was one pigeon used in WWII named Mon Cher Amie who flew important messages across battle lines. He was shot in the belly and lost a leg on duty but he survived and never failed to deliver his message. He was one of several doves used during the war that were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. They are reliable and loyal and mate for life. They can return to their home from any location within thousands of miles. They can remember and identify something like a thousand images in lab tests. It is estimated that at maturity they have an intelligence level equivalent to a three year old child! (I don't know about this one since our pigeon still hasn't learned to open it's mouth on it's own to put the food in, but what do I know about pigeon development....perhaps that will come in time?) Anyway, all those sidewalk and street corner pigeons pooping on passerbys are maybe smarter than they look. And even in the dirtiest city, they are still beautiful on the wing, lifting of in unison and flying in arcs over the streets and parks and fountains. Cooing to each other peacefully under the eaves, thriving handsomely amongst our trash and pollution.

The dove is the bringer of peace. In Christianity it is associated with the resurrection and the Holy Spirit. The Pueblo people believed that the dove could coax rain from the sky. The Celts thought the dove's cry was in mourning, to mark a soul peacefully passing to the next realm. The Slavs believed the doves helped carry souls to heaven, and the Gypsys believed them to be messengers of divine love. Messengers of hope, gentleness, peace, loyalty, compassion, love. That is a pretty great reputation.

Is this a message for us? I've been thinking a lot about faith and acceptance. I had hoped this time in L.A. was going to be a time in when I was going to be putting my life back together, concentrating on school and the future, having a fresh start and a new perspective, getting my feet on the ground and finding my stride again, but instead sometimes lately it seems possible that it might just turn into a time of struggle with further obstacles and complications. After several years of struggling through divorce, health issues, adjusting to a totally new lifestyle with a new family and finding a new orientation for my career I feel ready for it to come back together again. I feel ready to feel in control and confident again, but that may not be what life is holding for me now. It takes a lot of faith and acceptance to have patience with that reality.

****

Next morning. Sadly the pigeon is gone. He ate and peeped heartily yesterday and we heard him shifting in the night as I wrote the above passage but this morning when we opened the box he had died. It was kind of unexpected and sad. I guess it shouldn’t have been. He is an abandoned baby pigeon from the street…his survival was never a given. We had been impressed with his growth and improvement though. He was here a week exactly. Whatever was wrong with him, he didn't seem sad or weak, and he accepted what care and attention we gave him with enthusiasm and something like appreciation. His arrival in our house was a welcome distraction for the past week and it was amusing and enjoyable to care for him and see him thrive for a little while. I’m sad that he didn’t continue in this world but I’m glad that he came into ours.

Peace comes with faith and acceptance. That appears to be my message of the week. Pigeons come and pigeons go. Times of confidence and ease come and then they go, and the same with times of struggle. It’s just the way it is. I think maybe now is not a time for me to ask questions or reflect any more on this. It’s a time to get down to work again. And working I have been and will continue to do! I’m completing my third semester of grad work and still managing to do one piece of my own work every week in hopes for a good portfolio and future career, writing this blog to work on my head, I just landed another waitressing gig to work on our finances, and it’s time now to clean the house for the week to work on some order and diminished dog hair in our lives. This week’s painting is a memorializing of the brief arrival of the sweet little Wilshire blvd pigeon in our lives. He looks peaceful, huh?

Crow

Crow. Last weekend we went to Napa and Sonoma for a film festival. We drove up the state on I-5 and on the way passed through an incredible landscape of dry yellow hills and valleys. With almost no vegetation other than dead grass it was so stark, the shadows on the hills stood out and described their round and simultaneously angular forms. It struck me that the hills up there are like no others that I have ever known. We rolled through this landscape for hours with very little life marring these sun-baked hills set against a cloudless blue sky, except for the occasional crow. Lone crows hovering, perching, swooping over the barren hills. I really like crows. They seem so self-contained and free and joyful in their solitude, and when they band together, into their so poetically named plurality, the “murder” of crows, they are raucous and appear to know no rules, but still are orderly in their unison movements. Crows seem to have a rich inner life and an unconventional but ready understanding of order in the universe. In hardship I imagine that a crow would never feel sorry for itself or act foolishly or give up. It would coolly examine its situation and accept it or figure a way out, or maybe appear to be accepting it while figuring a way out. It seems like it would be hard to get the best of a crow.

I have been trying to channel a little crow this week as we have had some disappointment. We believed that a much anticipated and hard-earned financial reward was coming our way this past week, and at the very last minute it turned out that it very potentially isn’t. I’m sure that I don’t need to tell anyone that matters of finance are a tough point for us and most everyone else these days. Tough times come and they go and this isn’t the end of the world, but it was bitter. It all gave me an opportunity to think about disappointment and examine it in my life. Being disappointed makes you feel stupid. We are in no way at fault in our current personal situation, and we weren’t the only ones who believed, but it still makes me examine myself for the flaw. As if, if we were perfect there would be no problems. Where do we get that idea? I always think critically about how I don’t lead a “safe” life. I do in a physical sense these days, but I don’t make decisions or choose paths for myself based on a secure or safe outcome. I live pretty much from the heart. If I don’t believe in something or feel moved by it, I can’t commit to it. Yes I don’t want to be worried and I do want financial security and a good job and kids and a secure life for them. Believe me I really do. But I guess it turns out that I don’t want those things as much as I want to feel inspired first. When I got tired of being a teacher and an activist I decided that I wanted to be, (even better from a financial standpoint!,) an artist,(sarcasm) and I fell madly in love with and married a writer/moviemaker and entrepreneur,(not exactly secure income there either,) and we have an un-luxurious yet still very expensive and complicated life arranged totally around our loves, passions and dreams. I suspect that this mode of living is somehow an affront to the corporate banking system, since they always seem to be punishing us for not having some “t” crossed or “I” dotted. Making financial decisions based on love, passion, and dreams is maybe not always the most conventional or secure way to go. Suze Orman would probably be disappointed in us if she knew. I wonder though, if I played it a little safer, would I actually hit these bumps in the road less frequently? Or does disappointment hit us all the same? I think of the various ways that it manifests and it does seem pretty universal: a missed opportunity, a failed relationship, a lack of recognition for effort spent, an unexpected outcome, an inability to obtain something sorely desired. I think of crow. Probably crow doesn’t have any expectations, and thus can never be disappointed. That seems smart, but totally unattainable to me with a complicated and wildly creative human brain. Also, I know that not getting what you want can often be a blessing in disguise, but really, how are you supposed to feel that in the moment? You have to grieve for your lost dream. Which sucks. But then, the really hard part that separates the men from the boys, spiritually speaking anyway, you have to keep your heart pried right open and not become bitter and closed in yourself and your life. Tough one. Very tough. What are the alternatives though? Going through life with fear and a hard heart? Not dreaming anymore? What a tragedy. With every new chance taken those sore spots hurt in anticipation of another disappointment. I guess that’s a tough thing about getting older and having more life behind you. As a kid I fell off of a horse once, flat on my back and had the wind knocked out of me. The instructor, bless her, made sure that I didn’t have a spinal injury, picked me up, brushed me off, and made me get back on that horse before going to the nurse. I’m not afraid of riding horses today.

Maybe mute crows alone hold the whys and hows of the universe since they can be at peace with it, no questions, no fear, no disappointments.

Ode to the Fair

(This is actually from last week, sorry I'm behind)
I have always loved the fair. Being a Vermont girl, to me it is an exciting event marking the last hurrah of the summer. In my childhood we would load into my mother's big blue tank of a Pontiac station wagon and drive the 20 miles through corn and squash laden valleys dotted with red barns between our old, rounded green mountains to the small city of Rutland for the Rutland County Fair. School would have already started and it would be hot and dusty during the day and chilly and crisp at night. Our journey out, usually on a school night, to meet my cousins and grandparents and sample the wholesome and hedonistic delights of the fair would seem like such a precious, exciting adventure next to the expanse of routine and orderly school day conduct stretching out ahead of me. As a young child I couldn't get enough of the bunny barn. There are pictures of me as a toddler in overalls with my face lit up in delight, pressed against the bars of rabbit cages at the fair. I actually got my first rabbits there. I couldn't believe my incredible good fortune as they sat there snuggled in an hay filled cardboard box in the car next to me on the way home. There is a picture of me at about age 7 joyfully squeezing them in my lap. Two fuzzy baby red satins, both supposedly girls except then in a few months we suddenly had like 14 rabbits instead of 2. I also loved to ride on the rolling backs of the shetland ponies trodding with their colorful saddle blankets around in a ring, and see the barns of sheep, cows, goats and pigs, some of them sporting shiny blue and yellow and white prize ribbons on their stalls.

Eating at the fair is fun if somewhat dangerous. Cotton candy and fried dough and french fries and hot dogs. This being Vermont we also had a dairy barn and a maple barn. In the dairy barn they made cheese and you could sample the curds and whey, just like little Miss Moppit in the nursery rhyme. The smell of the maple barn still haunts my memory. They must have frozen and saved some sap from the spring before because they always boiled during the fair and you could smell the warm, hot, mouthwatering sweetness of the sugar across the expanse from the Zipper to the grandstands. Inside you could get maple milkshakes, maple candy, maple fudge, maple-covered donuts, maple cotton candy, and that amazing transforming treat, sugar on snow. (Not really snow because it as September, but they would throw the boiling syrup onto cups filled with ice and it would become chewy, translucent maple taffy before your eyes.) And more lasting than food, the array of fair prizes were memory treasures to be won or bought and then deposited in the back of my closet for eternity. A neon yellow foam lizard on a wire that you could make dance, a fringe bottomed airbrush t-shirt of a unicorn, and a hair clip with turquoise feathers hanging down are a few that I remember. These were the eighties in case you haven't figured that out yet.

I like snacks, and having the stomach fortitude of a dachsund, (if you know dachsunds you will understand this, and it's not good,) I always shy away from the scary and fast rides. But the ferris wheel, the moon bounce, the haunted house, the bumpercars, and those wavy slides were and are just enough to get a laugh, give a little thrill, feel a little wind. Sometimes at night my family would stay for the evening show. We saw Box Car Willy one time. In high school my friends and I would go flirting and laughing and falling all over each other to sit in the grandstands and watch other teenagers run each into each other in brightly decorated jalopies at the demolition derby.

It all sounds pretty wholesome but there was another element to it. Yes, there were the 4-H kids and the farmers and the quilters, but Rutland is one of the few tough places in Vermont, so there were also the toothless elders and the screaming, slapping families and rowdy, reckless boys without much to lose, and as with every fair, the scary and seedy carnies themselves, greasy, unwashed and leering in their low riding jeans and ripped black heavy metal t-shirts. You didn't want to wander away from the family alone, and the dark areas in back of the rides, against the fences and behind the trailers held a suggestion of the sinister. In short, the delight, the gluttony, the joy, the thrill, the shiver of fear were an incredible sensory experience of which such vivid memories were made.

Actually, I don't know how to write an ode, as promised in the title (sorry!), but if I could I would write one to another particular Fair that I have spent a lot of time at in my later life and that I missed this past weekend. The Common Ground Fair. If you have never heard of it you should check it out at www.mofga.org. The Common Ground Fair is the largest all organic fair in the world I think, and it is put on by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener's Association in Unity, Maine. It is a combination agricultural fair, farmer and crafter's marketplace, music festival, sustainability symposium and workshop extravaganza. This event has been going on for over 30 years, and it is something to behold. The pastoral landscape of Unity is transformed into a carnival of brightly striped tents, demonstration gardens and orchards, and it is peopled with families and college kids and gaggles of teenagers wearing flower crowns and some incredibly interesting, skilled and knowledgeable people. It is humming with energy and ideas. If you want to learn how to spin or weave, log with horses, turn your home solar, save your seeds, keep bees, lobby for universal healthcare, become a midwife, make bean hole beans, (old new England tradition that is basically just what it sounds like: beans cooked in a hole in the ground,) you can find out about it all and so much more here. It is a really special event, largely pulled off by an army of volunteers, that is a tradition incredibly dear to peoples’ hearts. It has become so to me. I used to go with a crowd for work and set up and man a table for the duration, spending the nights camping in the fields nearby with hundreds of other volunteers and vendors. Staying at the fair for three or four days is like being part of a strange, peaceful village. It is usually hot and dry during the day, and after the sun wanes and the crowds clean out, the tents light up as people quietly get out guitars and sleeping bags. The weavers always have a shapenote singing session on Friday nights in their glowing white and red tent. The dairy farmers are up early in the frosty dawn to milk. Permeating the entire event is the patron herb of the fair, the green, clean, cheerful scent of sweet annie, sold in bunches. I wish I could attach some right here and we could all inhale deeply.

Last week we continued the fair going tradition by taking the family to the L.A. county fair. I was excited and a little apprehensive. What kind of indigenous industry would be represented here? Tents for plastic surgeons? Drug cartels? Porn? The entertainment industry? We drove through brutal highway gridlock to get there, picked up my stepdaughter at college nearby, and cruised off the highway to an incredibly massive complex of parking lots and pavement. After finally parking and paying a whopping fee just to get in, we entered the fair. There actually was a red barn with animals. It did have a McDonald’s logo on the top (see photo), which I would certainly find suspect if I were a cow showing up there. But the animals didn’t seem to belong to farms as working or livestock animals like you would see at an agricultural based fair in New England. They were more like petting zoo animals. There was a demonstration going on in various corrals explaining to crowds of young families about the lives and care of the farm animals. Almost all of the animals in there were incredibly clean, fluffy baby versions of the real deal. The main attraction was feeding the sheep and goats in the petting zoo area. In part this makes my heart sink, because it just shows how removed we are from an agricultural society these days. Kids need to see demonstrations about how a chicken lays an egg? But…Brick, my 10 year old stepson who is from L.A., had never fed a goat before, and he was delighted and hysterical over the charming, cheeky goats with their intelligent, inquisitive eyes and floppy ears softly nibbling the pellets out of his flat hand. Every kid in there was as happy as he was, so I guess that’s better than nothing. As an old professor of mine said, “You gotta meet people where they’re at,” and people in L.A. are at the entertainment level I guess. Those goats were entertaining.

As for my fears about plastic surgeons etc, the fair turned out to be pretty wholesome and typical. There was a great representation of Mexican food and culture. Roasted corn, chimichangas, chorizo, tamales, tecate, photos, flags and folk music. There were a ton of rides and opportunities to get your name airbrushed on a hat and such. We all rode a gondola over the fairgrounds and then went up on the ferris wheel. The lights sparkled and the excitement at night was palpable. The appealing smells of hot food and the squeals of excited children were everywhere. We ran around and ate and had fun. After all, it was the fair!

Frog Icon

I painted this frog for myself last week. I thought it could compliment my last post about illness and healing. Supposedly frog teaches us that tears cleanse the soul. I am just relearning watercolor after about a 15 year hiatus, and this is my first attempt outside of class. Could use some improvement for sure but I'm satisfied with the peaceful air about the frog. This is one of a series of animal icons that I've been painting every week or so. I'm noticing that they seem relevant to my life and mental state at the time so I think I'll start including them sometimes.