Filling In Skeleton

vampire skeleton cake

As I polished off a slice of cherry cake tonight, I couldn't help but think about this weeks spread "external" and the postings which Ceci has been sending out. My son, Jack, has been daily intoning me with the repeated question, "Mommy, when can we make a skeleton cake?" Actually, the description changed through the past two weeks, from Halloween cake to skeleton to pirate to vampire and back to skeleton cake. As it turned out, I was not the direct aider to his cake making fulfillment, Daddy engaged the mixing and frosting brigade with Jack today, as Hallie and I took some girl time together. I had to include my pics from their success with this weeks spread, as it is incredibly reminiscent (to me at least), of the Dia De los Muertos skulls Ceci posted earlier in the week, and echoed in the face of "external".

As the title to this post suggests, my intent here, is to simply fill in a few lines. I personally get a chuckle from this cartoonish left side of the page, in the toes I filled into the candy wrapper spaces, as part of my Dino body expression. Cec and I actually lifted the yellow crinkly paper recently to check in on the drawing, to see if it went beyond what's visible, and in fact, it doesn't, it is truly a filled in space - awesome!

In her last post, Cec posed a question to me about the book from which the attached sentence on external comes from and its original reference to me. The book is, Meetings with Remarkable Men, the 3rd book in the All and Everything series of G.I. Gurdjieff, who I was turned onto via Osho when I was visiting Puna, India in October 2007, an incredible and mind boggling set of stories, which I apparently read out of order, having made attempts at the first book in the series several times and failed to penetrate it beyond pg.200. - even this past summer, I made another hopeful pass, and was successful reading aloud into the three hundreds, but not yet beyond; this round was completely different I must say, perhaps I'm beyond some levels of delusion - or perhaps, I'm swimming in them! Whatever the case, I am here, and my story is here, where I am. Where are you? -J.

existential silliness

"external" click to view

Deady Eddy click to view

Z page this week "external" was birthed in Guadalajara during the restoration time I shared about in my 6/9/10 post. And as I shared before, it was when I began to paint these faces made of shapes and the lines of negative space in between. Some landed in ZBOOK including this one, created not with paint but instead with white sticker pieces. These pieces made up the borders and framing off an old sheet of stamps which was by this time stampless with only the sticker peripheries remaining. Let no sticker be unrecognized nor unused! As I've proclaimed before, there are stickers all around us in our lives, far beyond the packaged sheets sold at the craft store. The skeleton body came later...
O my goodness it just hit me that this body was drawn in Guadalajara also, but 2 years later when I was living their for 6 months and teaching art an an elementary school. My partner at the time Vinh was going to medical school there (which is why Guadalajara was a frequent spot for me during and after college) and it was a skeleton doll we got during our travels around mexico, in either Guanojuato or San Miguel De Allende, which inspired the drawing that gave the sticker face a body in ZBOOK. O man, what was that skeleton's name?! O yeah! Deady Eddy! ((sigh)) Dead Ed. We loved that that little dead dude. And I didn't even connect that early this week when connecting this page to Dia de los Muertos!

click these to view

ALSO from Guadalajara are these wrappers on the left, that I picked up from the playground at the elementary school I worked at. The top one is for some kind of candy kids eat by scooping out with a little plastic flat spoon. The one below is the top of a sticker package, folded open, you can see the hole in both sides for hanging the package in in the store display. It was Jennifer who later came in and added the middle section that gave a body to the face in the candy wrapper. And after that the dino's body line was extended into the stickers wrapper to excentuate the mirror opposite image in the wrapper, to which I apparently wrote on the side in orange pen " a kind of ying yang" Okay Cec, I suppose :) I'm now teasing myself. And now I'd like to tease myself for teasing myself. O man I did it again. Wait, the date says March 1999 also in orange which would be when I collaged the sticker wrapper in... so Jennifer's dino body came after... so how beautifully did she match up the body line with the "ying yang" line... simple things like this make my day. That is so much of what ZBOOK is about... the magic in simple gestures that meet in perfect timing in the presence of trust and play and availability and receptivity for it all to be revealed and discovered.


So we have bones which are internal yet external in terms of being the matter of the physical... and wrappers that are external and made for for disposal but kept to live on in the internal realm of ZBOOK (look for many other candy wrappers through out ZBOOK too) and on both sides of Z page are the glows of external light of which appear to be auras around these skeleton and dino bodies, also indicating an expression of something internal... or eternal. It tickles me how this page, which is so silly fun to me, also speaks to me of existential awareness. The element that probably set the latter tone, and certainly appeared on the page before the auras did is the cut out quote collaged over Dead Ed:

Cut out from a book that Jennifer sent me color copies of... of the cover and some inside pages, a beautiful book, O man I forgot the name of it again... Hemphill please refresh my memory... and if you feel like, I'd love to hear about how this book came into your hands and how it came to be copied and sent to me... that was late 2000 or early 2001 when Vinh and I were living in New York. And other images and words from those copies of that book appear in other places of ZBOOK. ZBOOK is indeed the search of understanding the mysteries of life... which can never be fully understood of course... thank goodness.


∞ ceci
6

week twenty nine >> "external"

Feliz Dia del Los Muertos... we expereinced Hallos-eve, and now we enjoy the celebration of LIFE through recognizing the dead... for that is life, the hologramic cycle of the birthing and the dying of everything which in itself has no begin or end because it's fundamentally energy.... ever present and alive... energy that mutates, transforms, changes form... each change appears as an end of that particular form... and then the new form emerges and "begins." From the chapters in our lives to our relationships to our sense of self to our very lives, we experience many deaths and rebirths along the way until we finally do die... yet we go on... our bodies change form and decay back into dust of the earth and our spirit, our energy, transmutes and lives on beyond this particular life. We often look on death and endings and change as frightening; we often resist change and fear death. But change and endings are the stuff of LIFE. And end is not about an ending at all it is about RENEWAL, marks a beginning, births new LIFE. It is hanging on to the same unchanged state of stasis that is a true death or end because with out change and circulation and transformation there is no living, movement, breathing, rhythm, LIFE.

In this season of harvest, autumn, scorpio, and day of the dead, the time is ripe to recognize what is outmoded in ourselves, in our lives, in our world...what needs to die out is is rotting away already done for... so we can consciously let it go.... so that we can discover all that is seeking to emerge through us. Not just the "bad" stuff, there is "good" stuff too in us and our lives -ways of being and thinking, identities, habits- that truly isn't us any more and holding onto it stagnates us, blocks us from unearthed possibilities, hinders our potential. In the spirit of the Day of the Dead, we recognize the dead in order to celebrate what is alive and wants to live. This day is also known All Souls Day. Once we slough away our excesses we attune to how our internal (soul, energy, light, awareness) gives life to the external (body/world/ideas/forms). Important to begin this weeding and harvesting in own selves and then together collectively. Interesting that our country's major election is set around this time every year. It's a prime time to recognize and choose changes.

"external" click to view

get down to the bones

in touch with your guts

in tune with your tones

releasing the muck

weeds from the internal

steam out now external

new breath fills new senses

new eyes see past fences

step into fortune & out of luck

revere what's done for it begun

the life that now thrives without it

& rejoice!

now that you've allowed it

∞ ceci

6

week twenty eight >> "phases"

 Into the glorious song of the moon we swim with this weeks 'phases' spread. 

Have you stepped outside to view the white goddess at night lately - tonight her beams cast light through wisps of windy clouds.  In the last few days her glow has burned holes through rainy clouds in my neck of the woods.  Certainly I've been witness to crazy driving and a bit of madness as the moon swelled full over the weekend and began her waning retreat in the last few days.  I took my kids to a daylight version of a Haunted Hayride on Saturday and with widening eyes was assured that the nights unleashings were beyond our howling capacities - at least as a family.  Our culture has an allowance for the release of a bit of stored in lunacy as Halloween season takes hold.  I can feel it in the air myself.  I feel it bulging in me as a sense of apprehension for some reason this year.  I think I'm honed in to my daughters nightmare holdings at present.  Every day for a bit now, when she wakes, she tells me of the fright she had in her dreams through the night - lots of death and darkness swirling in her passages.  Being her sensitive mother, I've no doubt absorbed into some of her experience. 

I remember sharing with Cec once my perception of the right side of this page, with its big eyes, as something from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon.  I have a memory of a dreamscape scene in which Bugs is running from and confronting this large furry redish beast.  It's head was very bulbous and their chase was through dark tunnels.  The thing about the creature were its huge white eyes taking up the breath of its massive head.  This page draws the sense of that encounter I still hold within me - kind of creepy, and also entertaining because it's quite silly and slightly disturbing.  Mostly my presence with that memory is of contending with something scary because it's unknown.

I've been trying to allow the children I'm working with at school to channel some of this rumbling unknown by bringing long jump to our training this week.  The instructions I've gleaned are to recommend they picture the elements in their process.  Like water, smooth and flowing they run toward the takeoff platform, where they ignite fire toward an explosion of their power which lifts them into the air for a flight on the wind till the gravity of the earth pulls them to their landing.  Mostly after their practice jumps, I remind them to focus on the fire of the liftoff.  To a few I speak the want for flight to hold its freedom.  At night, I notice my meditations of each child, where I picture them individually, are strong in the gesture offered in this act of the longjump.  It's a precious opportunity to see each of them one at a time engaged in an intense and focused output.  Often I work on a few kids at a time in my meditations, but occassionally I bring the lot of them in.  It's made me fully aware this week that I'm engaged with ninety five emerging humans.  When I think then of the parents who surround those ones whom I'm also engaged with and then the other groups of writhing humanity, it's a bit dizzying, no wonder I'm exhausted nightly!

And then, there are the blessings of rhythms and phases, seasons and cycles, which help to keep it all in balance.  The poem written in the golden lines at right of 'phases' was appropriated from the pages of "SageWoman", a periodical from my past collections which offered me many moments of self realization and attunement with the natural world.  I'm especially grateful still to that publication for the referral to the writings of Susan Weed, herbalist extraordinaire.  Thank goodness for the healing power of the moon.  I think I'll go out right now, before I'm off to bed, and soak in the showering calmness of her gaze.  Blessings and Be well, -J.

ArtOutside

I'm on my way out the door traveling today to Austin TX... excited to be a Live painter at this year's ArtOutside!

"Art Outside is a unique “boutique” art festival that uses the lush central Texas woods as a canvas for a multi-sensory exploration of all things artistic.

... a unique three day festival combining visual and interactive art, performance, film, as well as a wide range of music bridging genres, from bluegrass to experimental, hip-hop to dance music. Art Outside started with the idea to bring art out of the galleries and into a unique setting where different forms of art can connect and be enjoyed by all."

click the poster to discover more ------>

"listen"      click to view

I'm excited to find out what I'm going to be painting, what stories will come through, and what the shape of my expression is currently.  I'm going to be a witness to this right along with my viewers.  In a sense, I'll be listening.  To my own process, and especially to all the amazing art being conducted all weekend long by artists from around the world.  This listening is a harvest, and I am grateful for the bounty of ripe awareness and learning.

in love & gratitude
∞ ceci
6

week twenty seven >> "listen"

Stepping into this week we couldn't quite bid adieu to Z page from last week, and so "listen" stays anchored for another week in Z bay of our contemplation and intrigue.  This is certainly one of our fave pages, always standing out as if silently shouting out its own cultivated discoveries and prophecies about the roots of life on earth and beyond.  

Faces within faces appear to tell us tales of our own origins... for me as I sit with this page and truly listen, taking it in with all my senses, I feel the idea of origins as a hologram that truly has no actual beginning, as we go beyond ancient humanity, beyond our cells, atoms, and amoebas, beyond this planet into the unknown universe... which is possibly the very destination of this whole hay ride, also without end.

"listen"    click to view large

Life -of earth, of human, of cosmos- is the ultimate artist, and we living beings are the extensions of creation, inherently creative in every action and thought... inside our bodies alone, with out moving a muscle, we are in a constant state of creation.  Yes, this makes us all artists, and when we recognize this and we put it into intentional action, then O yes, then it is revealed and great creative enterprise is born. Through our stories and creative expressions, personally and collectively, we each gain access to our own personal drives, inspirations, and passions.  If we listen, with all senses, we may un-tap the wealth of our own potential harnessing within us... if we do this collectively.... then what is possible?

∞ceci

6

listen

You know, even though we have had ZBOOK as our companion for over 14 years, even though it lives as an intimate part of our lives, we are continually discovering it all the time. In many ways that's what we are doing here in Zblog; each look at each page is a fresh transmission with more layers rising up to the surface of our awareness all the time. Although I had a hand in creating these pages, I often feel quite outside of them. I don't mean separation here, I mean like sanding outside a house that you built and designed, yet without a blueprint... ZBOOK is not really mine or ours, it is its own entity that we now go inside to visit and step out again to reflect upon. It is a field of expression that streamed through us as we surrendered to each moment of offering markings and stories and pieces of life we found along our paths that carry their own stories... a place where we allowed these elements to dance and blend into a music we could never premeditate, story layered songs that we ourselves get to hear fresh,

click to view large

over and over, each time like another first, inducing current personal reflection and ripe inspiration. Jennifer and I were talking today about this, this LIVE essence of ZBOOK and our work together (as also explored in our other books and projects), how the process of how we create these pages is truly a stream of call and response that we simultaneously swim in and surrender in its current flow. It is what makes our work possible. It's called play, something I feel to be the avenue for the greatest work to be done, through which all possibility and potential can flourish, through which discovery becomes innovation. Z pages have their own stories to tell, even to us, as their summations are new arrivals, even as they carry the gestation of a thousand seasoned layers. The layers we may know personally, but the whole fruit grown from these elements, now ripe and beckoning harvest, is completely fresh food for our thought. When I experience art in the world, and if it speaks to me, a piece will evoke ideas, connections, and emotions in me helping me experience myself and where I stand in that moment in time, creatively and personally. The wild thing is to be experiencing this caliber of reflection via my own art. To feel both inside and outside the work, inside the elements, outside the entity each page has become thus enabling me to view them with great intrigue and illumination. And it continues here in Zblog as we compose these expressions of writing, like right now, allowing this expression to take form before my eyes and speak my heart for all to hear... including myself.

"listen"

 click to view large

∞ ceci
6

week twenty six >> "listen"

Listen up Rumourville, Hear me, Hear me...

Do not touch my heart of gold with your scratching glasses.

I Will stand, in gratitude and humblehood and speak my truthful love.

Let me stand in strong embrace with freshful face toward unions plenty.

Let me see with eyes clear and blinding what pictures wait beside my bedside table.

And let me know that Loves great gift will lift my bountiful sharing toward lights uplifting.

Here, on this page, prophetic soundings wail forth from fortified groundings.

Here, on this page, airs sweet breath lasts in top clearings camp of divided colors.

Love to this page for earths lined structure and form.

Love to this page for faces forlorn and reborn.

Shelter this page, in messages sung from begun.

Shelter this page, in ancients stone soul taking form.

Guide me, this page from fear, repercussion, sleepless dawns.

Guide me, this page with shimmer and color and squirm.

Fly me strengths flights towards sharing, embracing, deepening sights.

With prayers soaring mind, peace and calm may you descend in ascent of thirty-three in Chile. Our troubles are but minor woes - Love and light blast through! blessings to all -J.G.

Northern crack ups

So fun to discover yet another quote from our beloved Northern Exposure in Z page this week:

"cohesion" click to view

NE quote click to view

"that's the movies

Ed, try reality"

-Fleischman

"no thanks" -Ed

Speaking of Northerns and this here page "Cohesion" and how it is so much about the collision within cohesion and the cohesion that is collision, this couldn't be more exemplified than by Northern Exposure's Joel Fleischman and Maggie O'Connell, who collided in the moment they met, always an upheaval and battle between them, always the friction of verbal attacks and passive aggressive antagonism storming between them..... and always a tension that begged to be quenched with a surrender to a festering passion. Their dance of query is a fun display of how collision is cohesion in disguise and how resisting cohesion only heats up the friction in collison making the threat of cohesion ever more sweeter.

Case in Point (as Fleischman always says) is this clip of the first moment when Fleischman and O'Connell at last reach a peek of frustration that peeks their cohesion. From the 2nd season, the PSL deemed "epic" episode called "Spring Break" (which hey! I wrote about in my 8/14 post which speaks of the NE quote on Z page "hidden" from this very episode!) when everyone's on edge due to the tension of the last days before the winter's ice finally breaks and releases into spring. Enjoy this cohesion of collision! Northern Style :)



PS(L): I must have seen this literally 200 times and still, that image of Chris dancing in the luau party background CRACKS me UP :)!


∞ ceci
6

week twenty five >> "cohesion"

Ok, I am going to be present with this torrent, as I metaphorize from this page to shed light on my own turbulent dialogue...

This spread, ‘cohesion’ is a tornado of forces colliding and swirling and intersecting.

cohesion




Dwelling on the current swell of breakdowns in communication in my household,

I sat on the porch this evening to breath in the calm and cold air.

When I dive into the spread of ‘cohesion’, I actually feel bounced all around,

like several large and energized weather organizms are occupying the space,

contending as to which will ingest me into their shadows the deepest.

In a way, I must love this experience,

as I thrive in the bounce of the seas crisp shipboard sprays.



There is power in this circulation.

When the title for this page came into existence, it was conscious...

we knew this spread was not really communicating together – in the same language...

and so, there grew an intervention of searched for ‘cohesion’.

Color, Form and Collaboration were immediately inscribed

as uniting entities.

And though there was suddenly a definite strike of – “this spread needs ‘this’ kind of jolt” -

 Wherever I put down color, I sense that I held the truth of the separateness of the worlds – like flips, opposites, complimentors, but not overlappers of each distinct pages whole.

Their conversation is loud and pointed in places, and it floats in pockets as well.

For me, the weathervane in this page is the axis - access;

The copper beast allows my eyes and thoughts to spin.



weathervane -copper beast

I imagine riding the crest of the arrow through a thunderstorms winds –

Seeing the crash of striking white heat

and hearing the drumming of music expounding in the atmosphere.

 Perhaps if I take this stance, on the arrows spin, and allow the clouds of relationships strife to rainfall their darkness... perhaps I can release attachment to each drops wetness.

The challenge of course lies in the experience, that I am represented by a form as well...

and that I am the releaser of the pour, as well as a deflector...so many eyes to see from – and yet, I am one, and so I choose to ride the rooftop pointer. AMEN. -J.





Lucent Oracle

"oracle"     click to view

I shared with you about this in my 9/7 post, and from time to time I will continue to share with you the Oracle Page I conduct on the Lucent Dossier website... what better timing than when Z page "Oracle" graces our week. 

 This week the Oracle pulls the stone of Compassion, please click the photo for the reading.

[if you go to the Oracle page after this week, scroll down to find Compassion (week of 9/27/10) and enjoy the other readings along the way!]


∞ ceci
6

week twenty four >> "oracle"

Today, the sky upheld the confirmation of this season. Through this heat we have been drooping in, here in LA, experiencing what some call an Indian Summer, through this, a thunder storm. As I rolled into Altadena this afternoon, returning the last vestiges of the volleyball team I coach, the rolling drum of lightning sounds dropped down from the surrounding mountains. Arriving home, the fall light of sunsetting through layered clouds and rains revealed the brightest rainbow. It produced a neighborhood corner gathering for a few moments of shared upliftment, until the strikes of Zeus began to flash close enough overhead to send all inside to observe from safety.

Today, at the Waldorf school I teach at, the 2nd grade and the 6th grade led the school in an annual celebration of Michaelmas as they presented the story of Nkosnati and the Dragon. Following, during the school wide games period, I was overseeing ‘the Dragons Sea’, through which the children were instructed to traverse a low wooden balance beam. In my creative simplicity, as I mulled how to make each grades challenge developmentally appropriate, I settled into a shared experience of a dark sea, where the travellers were to walk the narrow path with eyes closed. It was a stirringly beautiful observation vantage I then became witness to as each child approached with varying levels of confidence, and then embarked on this unsettling and brief task. The teetering balance between concentration, serenity and fear lit up in the closed eye faces. And I knew that this ‘game’ I hosted, upheld the Michaelmas sword... Courage to face dragons.

click for larger view

Today, as I look into zbook, entranced by the oracle image, seduced by the dragons at left, I am holding a deep gratitude for this season. As fall takes hold in its many faceted embrace, I am reminded by this zbook spread that the veil between worlds begins to thin in this time. In my readings and understandings of the Michaelmas festival, we humans are encouraged to take up our swords of Courage as we begin to enter the darkness of winter. Into this season, our Courage can lead the light of our soul to stand in truth before our own personal dragons and those which are reflected to us in the worlds vast seas. We are fortified with strengthening iron, running boosted in our blood and spreading, falling into our earths atmosphere from meteoric sources. The coverage of clouds across the sky with lightning striking is a visual of this picture, of forces converging, constricting to enhance power.

Today, as I continue to celebrate the birth and life of sweet Hallie, chronicled within the oracle, I wish great courage to swell in her heart. Nineness has taken hold, including an opening awareness to the outer world. In my parenting, I am faced with helping her, and myself, to overcome fear and doubt which has suddenly shadowed its presence with stronghold into our daily life. My child, who has been a breath of daring and outgoingness is facing the grip of an uncertain world. As she was sharing her choke today, she turned it around for herself, bursting into song of ‘slaying the dragon, St. Michael’. Blessings to you darling Libra, and may your many wisdomed guardians offer lights into the cave for you. Looking at you today, walking straight and confident, with eyes blinded from the sea, I was amazed to see your relations shining in your maturing face and stance. And, I pray for me to help see and acknowledge the emerging you which continues to crack through layers of childhoods protective shell. Dear Oracle, I am open to guidance and wisdom from all sources in this quest, feed me well to strengthen my courage! -J.

getting in touch

"touch" click to view

On the other side of Z page "Touch" is the story who a girl who invited a story. As I have shared before (visit 4/28 post) there was a time in 1999 that I taught art at an elementary school in Guadalajara, Mexico. After a wonderful visit from Jennifer I had ZBOOK with me in Guad and brought it with me to school everyday. One day when sharing ZBOOK with 2nd grader Paloma, she began asking me about my friend who does ZBOOK with me. "What is she like?" I told her that she is fun, loves to play, and loves postcards. "I want to write her," Paloma said. So I opened up ZBOOK to a blank page and offered it to her with my blue pen. On the upper left of the page you will see the words:

click to view

click to view

from Paloma.... Hi....what is your name?..... Are you a friend of Ms Ceci?..... Write me over here----->

She followed her words with a column of horizontal lines. "She can write me back here," Paloma told me. Jennifer did write back (in purple pen) later that year, unfortunately by that time I no longer lived in Guad and had already bid farewell to those lovely children.

click to view

Many years later appeared this neuron atop this correspondence, which I would normally assume came from me, but this one has such the watery feel of Jennifer, the very veins I know so well from her hand... hmmmmm. Do you remember, Hemphill? It does seem evident that it was the last element to grace Z page since its body of veins extends perfectly into the space created by the leaf and correspondence auras. Right in the same spot... the birth, with Paloma's writing, and the close, with the hovering neuron.... full circle of life. Fitting for the season we are in, of autumn, fall, harvest. Perhaps that is why the leaf found its way here to this page spread. Fell right in.






∞ ceci
6