Reflecting The Seasons - Or Not

I am a big believer in reflecting the seasons as a means of paying homage to them, in the colors one wears, even the scents.

Today in Los Angeles, winter has been interrupted by a wild jag of warm weather. I mean Really warm weather! What is a girl to do? Normally this season I have been comfortably swathed in layers of black, stealth luxury.... The message, "Notice me, but not too much, and don't intrude". I am a creature adapted to the urban jungle.

The day is bright! The colors almost Fauve or Crayolla bright. It is also semi-tropical. "What's going on here?" I think as look out the window. Suddenly the characters braving the swimming pool in January do not seem so brave, or deranged, as they would when it was 40 degrees. No. Today, feels like the upper 70's!

For a moment confusion reigns. Dressing had been so blessedly simple and comforting. I love black, but today it simply would not do.

A day like today makes one want to molt the somber colors and textures just as nature has, and to reflect her mood, and the other bright things in her creation. So, not only am I going to sign an art gallery contract in a T-shirt and jeans, I am punctuating it with a long woven scarf, like a spider's web shot with pink, but balanced with taupe and ivory.

This calls for a change in maquillage as well. Where dark plums and mysterious mauves have been the norm, everything has been given a wash of lightening and blush, fresh, like the blush on the beautiful day we have been given to enjoy.

Tomorrow may be cold and rainy (not a problem, I like such weather) and for that I'll be prepared in contemplative shades of black, charcoal and heathered gray; but that will be for another day, another mood as I celebrate the seasons in my own private way. You can do this too. It is part of living life as art.

In another mood, you could do the diametric opposite, be a blaze of red on a gray rainy day or a shady lady in black crisp separates or a little black dress in the summertime. One can be a vision in winter white in January, becoming the illusion of cool pristine snow wherever you are. Whatever you do, the difference is that now you are aware.

Bohemian Rapsody

I visited a place on Main Street in Santa Monica today called Planet Blue, (310) 317-8566.

While my husband whined dramatically that "there was nothing in here", his idea of heaven is Frye's electronics or Pep boys - both of which make me feel like I am being deprived of oxygen; which in the case of Pep boys it's really true, as it is redolent with brain dissolving automotive fumes.

Such is not the case at Planet Blue where you can find the most unusual range of bohemian eclectica. There are boutique fragrances, cosmetics and skin polishers to put magic and wonder into your private world of the bath from Italy, France, and the United States. I doused myself in scents of amber, sake, and tobacco.

There are clothes worthy of a bohemian 70's star here, as well as earth mother offerings, nubby sweaters, and plush blankets to pamper the baby in all of us. The sixties and seventies never really left the Santa Monica regions of Main and Abbott Kinney.

Even if this is not your normal style, it behooves one to explore, maybe try on some things, as if you were exploring the grand attic of some dramatic aunt. This takes you out of your normal patterns and lets you look at clothes with more creative possibility. Clothes are more than just about dressing. They are also about costume. As such, they are a way of expressing yourself, or a mood, or a character you'd like to be for a night.

None of the senses are left out at Planet Blue. You can happily wile away an hour or so with childlike wonder, examining a photography book by the late Herb Ritts, or turning embossed river rocks over in your hands, feeling the weight, and imagining them strategically placed beside a plant in your home or lost amongst a pebble walkway, suddenly catching your eye and calling out for you to 'dream' to 'create', or to 'just be'.

Finding Your Voice

I attended the opening of a gallery show this evening. Among the interesting people I spoke with (fluids in hand for my throat) was this Chinese chap who was an architect who dreamed of being an artist. The thing was, he had no vision, and no voice.

It is wonderful to study technique. It is wonderful to study art history, but ultimately, you have to dive into the pit and create. Speak. It is only through trusting yourself and creating that you will find your voice.

Voice is several things. It is style, and it is existential paradigm, what you are talking about and the language you go about saying it in. This is so individual, but for this lad, that was the very hurdle. In his culture, individualism is about as charming as Satanism, so he had to breach this by encouraging himself, or forgiving himself for 'being eccentric'.

Now, most artists have a certain eccentricity to them. The diva of Devi Arts is no ecception, but I recognized that coming from the culture this man did, he was up against a lot of internalized programming. I encouraged him to find his voice. I asked him what kind of style he did his architecture in and perhaps to see if he could fluidly translate this into his art - which would be an interesting thing. Perhaps he wanted to veer away from this completely. That is fine too, but to you, reading this blog, the takeaway is this: Do. Create. Be. Choose. Risk. Trust yourself. Find your voice.

This is true if you are a painter, but it is also true for you as a human being. Find your own voice. Let no one dictate it or trick it from you. Live life as art.

Energy Vampires

Have you ever had a run-in with an energy vampire? I'll bet you have.

I certainly have, in fact, I recently have, and I'm feeling like hell right now because of it.

As a lady I like sagely noted, "There are givers, and there are takers. The givers give, give, give, and the takers take, take, take." The givers put out their light to others and receive energy from their own efforts, and energy from the universe. Then, there are others, psychic vampires who see this light and admire and are drawn to it, but not to be inspired to light their own lights, but to drain from the energy of the one they have fixated on. These are not pale creatures in Bela Lugosi suits, but real people in 'skin suits' as a Native American woman shaman used to describe them.

They may be very engaging on the surface, very cute, very charming, endearing in their neediness and desire to hang out with you, but beware. You have been marked as a delicious source to tap, and once you are used up, injured, or otherwise become wise to them, they will go on their merry way, like a drug addict, bored, hungry, existentially empty, morally ambiguous with a wonky moral compass where the ends justify the means and lies are a way of getting what they want, looking for the next light, the next source, the next fix. They are emotional con men and women, restless and superficial. The damage they cause only bothers them to the degree that they suffer repercussions personally.

In the case of this woman, I was astonished with her cavalier attitude towards lying, and how naturally and often she lied, to me and to other people. The only thing that bothered her, was if she were to be 'caught in a lie', as it seemed she might be with a man she'd duped, lying to him about what she did, where she worked, or if she was even working at all. She was concerned that this might affect his image and trust of her, and I can assure you it would. What a terrible way to live. It is the way of false ego. Living life as art is not about being a liar. Save your creativity for other things like dreaming and doing, and respect that others need their life's chi to create their own lives. The other is the way of sociopaths.

This is very destructive behavior, both to the host, and ultimately to the energy parasite, who if he or she is stupid, greedily devours so much of the person's energy that the host is drained, exhausted, weakened, possibly injured or sick and then is cast off. If they were really smart, they would sip little and slowly, but they are not smart. They also do not give, or they give very little, without care, just enough to keep the supply coming from the target.

I think even Shakespeare said it. 'Beware of flatterers'. These people masquerade as friends, and as lovers, when you are just a source of supply to them, easily expended as you would to a carton of milk you drained dry. Also, what better victory than to take someone they admire and reduce them to a flickering gasping creature, while they go off with that source's energy persona, which they parade around in like borrowed clothes. Did I mention they like to lie?

This is not 'living life as art'. You do not find an artist host and put a feeding tube in their energy systems, clouding up their minds with your dramas and narcissistically demanding that they be sources of energy supply for your personal energy empowerment. That is not how this works. It is not honest. It is lacking in integrity. It is the depths of selfishness. There is so much energy out there in the universe, so much power for you to develop in yourself, but you have to light your candle.

And people, please do it without draining out the lamp oil of somebody else, particularly someone you admire. Envy does not make you brighter if you repay the other's kindness with sucking their energy so that they cannot shine as bright, or worse, you make it so that they cannot follow their dreams and destiny. You have no right to do that. You only make the world darker. You make things bad for everyone including yourself. Don't do it.

To live life as art, we all must be inspired. I've been inspired by many. I seek and allow myself to be inspired all the time, but live and let live, people! Bless people and let them shine. Think of others as well as yourself. Give them the space they need, and if they are generous, be gracious, give back, and that does not mean asking for more, or worse, tricking it out of them. That is called stealing. It would be like to marvel at a glorious butterfly and beat it because you hope to acquire something it has for yourself, or worst, just to put out its light. This is an empty soul for which no light can enter.

It is not enough to seek to live life as art. When you do so, as you shine, as you smile, as you spread your wings and fly, take care. Take care of who you attract with your light, who flatters you. Be aware of how you feel around this person. Is this person talking much about how spiritual and nurturing they are, yet all they seem to do is ask from you and then to take as much as they can, even when you are exhausting your resources?

Do you dread answering the phone when the energy parasite calls? Does talking to this person leave you feeling distracted, disturbed and drained. Is your throat aching and sore, your voice and energy weak after talking to this person, particularly on the phone. Are you breathless and winded like the air has been drawn out of you? If that is the case, this is a time to disengage. Hopefully, the damage will not be too great.

No matter how charmingly they apologize, or if they turn things around projecting and transferring onto you, you cannot keep such people in your life. No one can afford to have their life's energy centers drained away in this way. When enough is gone, it is very hard for it to bounce back. In some cases, it cannot. The energy vampire will go merrily on. They will thank you for your kindness, or threaten you with retribution, but having taken all they wanted or all they could, they will be on to the next source of narcissistic supply and energy. The effect for you, is the same.

It is one thing to give impersonally, or to give when there is reciprocity, but when we give of ourselves personally, we make ourselves very vulnerable to those who only think of themselves. Have courage and integrity, and demand that others you keep around you do the same. Stay safe out there, and live life as art.

The Scent Of A Woman

What is the scent of a woman in another country from you?

Have you ever imagined this? Have you ever thought to explore? If you do not travel there, another may go, or there is always the global marketplace of the internet to draw some curiosity into your normal world.

Like a costume from another culture, scent lets you slip into the psyche of women from another culture, the existential heartbeat. It lets you experience them, and yourself in a new way. I remember recently reading that according to market research, Latin women preferred scents that were floral but that also had fruit notes.

A friend of mine was going on a business trip to Madrid. I asked him to bring me back a toiletry that was native to Spain. It could be anything, but something that I could not find in America.

He succeeded brilliantly. Not only did he gift me with a Spanish fan from a place that sold Mantillas, he braved Madrid airport security to bring me back a scent that Spanish women treasured, which would give me a sense of what it would be like to 'slip into their skin' so to speak; to feel as one of them in the private moments of my boudoir. He brought me the designer Adolfo Dominguez's scent 'Aqua Fresca de Roses', a fragrance which recalls fruit and flowers floating in water, their diffuse infusion, crystalline, refreshing, sparkling, and very feminine.

At night, I wash in the gellee, smooth on the scented skin milk and finish with a veil of scent. I look at myself in the mirror and feel 'myself', but as a Spanish lady. It is an interesting scentual experience, different from my usual choices. I revel in heavy scents at this time, Tunisian amber oil, Samsara with it's heavy lidded Sandalwood and euphoric Jasmine notes, Nuit de Noel by Caron. There are others. Some I may abstain from for a year or two or more. I can be loyal to one man, but never to one perfume, though I don't stray for too long if I love it.

For now, I am flirting with this surprising Spanish scent and experiencing life as a 'Maja', a beautiful Spanish lady from Madrid, sparkling, florid, and ripe with sensuality, but with a crystalline modern quality, an effervescence that my husband has commented on and which is not incompatible with the black alpaca wool I am usually swathed in when I brace against the winter winds. It is like an ice-shard of rose water in which ripe mangoes had been floating. In its own way, it is devastating.

Marking Sacred Space With Sage Smudging

Part of living life as art is honoring the sacred in the moment.

One of the things I wanted to do to usher out the old and welcome in the new year was to conduct a ritual often used by the American Indians, burning a wand of wild sage leaves over a bowl of sand so that the herb torch formed a smoking ember with which I could clear and mark sacred space in my home and work areas.

Preparation for this ritual which we conducted New Year's Eve were integrated into the Christmas vacation where we drove along the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu's Zuma Beach, a place I love because it is a real beach as nature intended, and often deserted save for the season's characters and offerings, sea gulls or sand pipers. The day I went, it was empty. The tides had traced ripples into the sand, which like when snow has just fallen, is perfect, and untouched by human footprints. We had tarried, but this had worked in our favor as the sun was setting, like a glowing orange ember on the horizon, setting the sky on fire.

I had brought a container with me, a plastic jar with a lid, to gather sand from the seashore to take back with me for this ritual of purification and renewal. Ritual is important. It is part of celebration, part of healing, part of creating. In an interview in 1984, the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham said, "Spring may be the death of winter, but it is also a rebirth. Right now, the tulips are coming up in the garden outside - they are about three inches high. There is a progression, and ritual is necessary to life - if an animal does not have it, some other animal kills it."

We can be so careless in our haste, in our haste to acquire, to move foreward, to assimilate, that we do not pause and walk with clearness. We forget that we must cleanse as well as take in, that we must slow down and let go, so that the new can be welcomed in. In this spirit, I collected sand and bought sage gathered by native Americans in Baja, California who have observed ritual for many generations, the rituals of nature and the seasons.

On New Year's Eve this year, we passed up the loud and the brash. We had champagne, yes, but we turned out the lights as the last half hour of the year seemed to be racing past like sand through an hourglass. We lit the sage and held it over a bowl filled with sand to catch the errant embers that would threaten fabric and carpets, and painted the air with the scented smoke of the sage wand. We prayed or consiously intentioned that the space would be cleared and blessed.

We opened the doors so that the smoke could go out, but also so that the old stale energies, pain, grief, arguments, anything that I did not want hanging around at the liminal moment of the final passing of 2006 and the entrance of 2007 could be released, and so it was. And so it is.

That evening also gave birth to the beginning of this blog, something that is like a dynamic letter sent out to the ends of the earth, to friends I have not yet had the pleasure to speak with, but with whom I feel connected to through the Internet human family. This post is like a ripple going out on water, like a message in a bottle, unleashing its contents when it finds you.

My message today is that to live life as art - the spirit of Devi Arts, is to live your life with mindful awareness of it as something sacred, and part of doing that is to mark sacred space. This can and should be done in many creative ways, and I will speak more about this anon.

For now, I share this story, and this idea which you can use at any time that you feel is right, to cleanse your space and make it sacred and pure, a place where you can renew yourself and create, free from the shackles of the past. Let your spirit be your guide.

Thoughts On A Christmas Tree

Imagine a Christmas tree. Not just any Christmas tree, but a fir tree rising several stories high, towering over the luxe shopping village of Beverly Hills, 'The Grove'. It seems impossible that it would be real as one rushes to the concrete rim of multilevel parking site to gaze out at it.

"No, it can't be real." one decides. "It is fake." But it was not.

We had gone out for an afternoon's jaunt, milking the last drops from Christmas vacation, the last sugary, peppermint sparkly drops from what has been a wonderful season, carefully planned and honored. We were not disappointed. Santa's sleigh flew overhead, his reindeer pawing at the air, exhilarating and precarious.

We approached the tree, still convinced it was an artificial illusion. Standing at the base, it seemed to rise into an apex one could not deduce. It seemed to go on forever, with ornaments as big as a man's head. People tentatively touched the needles. Then an old woman spoke.

"The tree is real. And it is all one tree."

Amazed, we ran around to look at a sign the management had erected. It was a 100 foot tall White Fir tree harvested from the forests of Northern California. It was 86 years old. After this time, such trees either succumb to disease or fall because of their great weight. It was harvested to this glorious end, strung with thousands of ornaments and even more thousands of densely wrapped lights. What a wonderful glorious end for its long and anonymous life.

This tree was even larger than the one at New York's Lincoln Center, a natural marvel, and a marvel of frozen time. "Eighty Six years..." I thought, looking into the dense web of branches to its improbably strong core. What was happening when this great tree was a sapling?

It was another world, unrecognizable from the fast-paced knowledge based information linked world of today. It was a smaller world, and a world so unfathomably large that peoples and cultures never mingled. When this tree was a sapling, there was no aviation, no sports cars... heck, there were barely cars. As I stood in the heart of Hollywood, I thought of the time again.

When this tree was a sapling it would have been 1921. There weren't even talkies then. It was the days of Rudolf Valentino, Theda Bara, nouveau Vamps and throwbacks to Edwardian angels. And here we were, standing in wonder at the base of this gigantic tree. How many people had lived, loved, bred and died within the span of its life's journey that brought it to this moment? The world has changed, shifted, morphed. I felt so much time, so much life, so much silence of this great plant wash over me. It gave me chills.

After the holidays, the tree will give yet more gifts to man, mulch and firewood. Fourteen new white fir trees will be planted in its place. Surely not all of them will survive, but if one lives as long and strong as this one, what kind of world will it find in 2093?

How Would One Handle Fame?

I was musing on the random question put out by Blogger as I wrote my profile, running back and forth to bookshelves, and it took on a life of its own. I had to trim it down to the quote by Martha Graham, but I thought this would be an interesting philosophical thing to tussle with. Feel free to ponder the question and share your thoughts.

"You've written a hit musical! How will you avoid having fame go to your head?"

Interesting question.

Let me share a quote from an interview with the famous dancer and choreographer Martha Graham that has always inspired me, "The search for truth is frightening. When she danced, when she speaks, and when she choreographs, Graham admits she is frightened. "You're dogged by ancestral footsteps; you don't know if you will fail your dreams, so you must keep yourself vulnerable - to a color, to a tree in the garden, to light. You can't concern yourself with the fear, only with what you have to do. You must exist in the now, on the instant, no matter what it costs you."

I imagine it is like looking at the sun as it sets at the beach over the water. You cannot stare into the sun. You can only glance and then you must look away, being aware of what is around you, the colors of the sky, how the veil of night moisture covers the landscape, blotting out all detail, the sound of sea birds as they fight over a fish. The old woman looking out to sea. The young mother and her baby, the cool lavender sky behind you with the full moon hanging like an orb in the sky. If you look too long at the sun you'll go blind. You'll miss seeing and experiencing the silent humbling harmonic connection with all that is around you, connected and apart.

The same is true for an artist, if you are to remain an artist and retain your essential soul, your connection to Spirit and Source. The philosopher Rollo May wrote in his book 'The Courage to Create' that the artist needs to be both the qualities of solitary and solidary - solidarity, connection to the world, as well as the inner worlds of emotion and the unconscious.

If you lose this, you would have nothing to give. You would increasingly feel like a fraud, and then your life would become something else, a drama played out in the tabloids as you played yourself out to your final apotheosis. That is frightening to me. I want to be there like a star in the sky, shining, and yet distant, accessible and yet unknowable. This is the way the artist serves society, reflecting the inner world, the zeitgeist of the moment, and inspiring others in a chain reaction.