Grandma's Toothbrush Holder

I opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet my family and friends helped move into my office from the garage (Gurge in caveman language).

That filing cabinet used to be my right hand friend, and I have not opened it since 2009, it is 2011, and before that for seven more years it was barely opened out of frustrated plans.

My method of filing was found unacceptable by another one day during a cultural clash. ‘Left of center’, centre spelled differently now, I use to say then.

And now, I say ‘thank you’ to my golden friend who always keeps me wanting to be on the planet just to know more. You are one and many, with names that sound funny, some sad, some out of this world, but always your many names represent golden round love.

My grandmother began painting late in life. Her son, my father, was an artist. She thought it looked fun and began painting what looked like sick cows and moved onto genius rather quickly. Grandma's china painting was some of the best I have seen, so delicate, precise, yet loose, many hours of gentle applications, many firings, and with the luck of the Irish (Grandma would say), an art piece was born.

This afternoon I found one of her art pieces I had tucked away in the top drawer of my filing cabinet right before I moved one house to another, several moves ago, I had completely forgotten it.

I opened the drawer and heard something other than paper moving around, I spread the files and there was a bone china toothbrush holder painted ever so daintily with soft yellow roses and impressionistic leaves, signed Kise 1965 in my grandmother’s certain hand.

It was a good moment. It still is. I washed the toothbrush holder carefully with water rather than tears. The tears lodged in the back of my eyes glistened brightly, I saw my grandmother hold her breath to achieve such minute brush strokes that could only have come from a brush with one hair, and, a lot of patience, and, a lot of time, and, a love of painting.

I inherited that love from her, and both my parents. I was hit with a trilogy of painting people to guide me. Even if I am not a rose gal, I am more of an agapanthus or a bird of paradise and I love painting!

And, all my painting friends who come to remind me that life is good whenever I decide.


Grandma says, let’s rock and roll and paint anyway...
All we have to do is grow wings. Easy enough if you just paint them.
I decide, you decide, today we decided to do it...
And, grandma’s toothbrush holder came back round
Just to prove it, if you decide for it to.
I did, and I do, and I hope you do, too.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Don’t need teeth to laugh, aye?
Brush it all away with golden syrup
Dip it in chocolate, any kind...
Even the kind you can’t pronounce
It goes in so easy
Comes out twice as fast
Seems like gas
But, really freezes
Instantly sometimes
And never at others
Don’t blow my covers off
It’s cold soon enough
But, for now
I feel good
Just knowing
I have grandma's toothbrush holder.

What is Anyone to do?

Yesterday, Christchurch City's "The Press" revealled some things that most of us living here already knew. We live in a dangerous place. So, what do you do?

What do you do when those who would rather you not know, are letting you know enough to KNOW...we will have another "major earthquake of up to magnitude 7.0 during the next year"...now, that is something longer to anticipate than a tornado bearing down on you.

Being originally from Oklahoma, tornadoes are my reference point.

So, what do you do? What do you do with needing to go here, there or anywhere else outside your own home in order to live? My home is as earthquake proof as you can get it at the moment, but the Fresh Choice in Merivale isn't. And, I had to go there yesterday and was told by my husband it was 'safe enough'...I beg to differ and so did one of the employees there while I held my meltdown in aisle number three looking up at sudden death over my head. Nothing was strapped down, everything loosely stacked...I was appalled!

My daughter was with me and simply mortified by my loud enough observations to solicit the ear of one traumatized employee who adimitted "I am scared to death to come to work here, I am looking for another job and I cannot afford to quit until I find one".....

This is unaceptable.

I know we are all still in shock and completely traumatized, I know this. But, why there is no one to shut these places DOWN, until they are acceptably 'safe enough' for employees and customers, I do NOT UNDERSTAND.

I will not give Fresh Choice one more purchase EVER, for their complete and utter contempt for human life they have shown me by chasing the buck before making sure they have done everything conceivably possible to prevent loss of life in our next anticipated wave of devastation.

I waiver from one moment to the next...

Do I stay here and allow others to be in control of my safety, or do I just leave everything behind and get out now?

What's a Sister to Do?

Why, tell them about feminine energy rising...

And, perhaps warn them, how hot it is...

When sisters have been forced to keep quiet, and simply watch too long...

They lose face and wait for another moon...

But, coming soon...is an explosion...I promise, watch this space.

These paintings are all done by a man calling himself Domingo. They are part of a collection owned and housed under beds in a city called Christchurch, New Zealand, wherein earthquakes tread daily. They came from the spirit surrounding Domingo that insisted that feminine energy MUST rise up to help resolve the tremendously imbalanced issues all over this planet we call earth, our mother, our system, our world.

Our world is hurting...and, longs for everyone to listen, stand up and rise up to the basic rhythms of creativity...

You can't have a beautiful world without the complete inclusion of women.

What Brother John has been up to

This is the first fire in the outdoor oven Brother John built in our backyard in Christchurch, New Zealand. It has been a labour of agitation, shock, and determination, grounded in love for a city’s sudden demise and the rebirth of opportunities between a brother and sister after many years in the darkness. A fire is perfect that forges new memories with the old to create something awesome out of devastation.

In the beginning, there was a home that had been acquired that did not meet up to our expectations because we had to downsize for economic reasons. We were only partially moved into our home the week of the first earthquake in September, 2010. Suddenly, there was even more chaos than we ourselves provide. Nature had begun to redecorate our household, lifestyles and define what our needs truly are. Now more than ever, access to fire became very important for warmth, cooking, light and that feeling that only fire can bring a reflection for the soul’s deepest contemplations.

In November, my husband and I went to America to visit friends and family and contemplate whether we stay in Christchurch or move somewhere else. We came back to Christchurch and began trying to pretend September never happened, then, February, 2011, came and gone was any pretence that the place we had chosen for our home had to be tremendously renegotiated, recreated and still always in the back of our minds, relocated as well. Brother John, being a builder and a mason, decided to come from America and visit Christchurch, New Zealand and see what he could do to help us all.

Unfortunately, at this writing, there is no real re-building going on in Christchurch, just mostly demolition. Much of the historical and should I say hysterical buildings are rubble now, not just from the natural disasters that happened, but from the chaos that happens when things are more than anyone or even a collective of everyone can handle, machines of all kinds move in and crunch and munch without planning and contemplation. Herein, was born the agitation we felt as we witnessed perfectly sound building materials being hauled to the dump.

With nothing to do and nowhere to go, and a profound fear of even being inside our own home, we began to collect bricks being thrown away and committed to building a kitchen outside our home that would function without the power society has forced us to become so dependent upon, electricity.

These were our building blocks, our thoughts were committed, we would use what everyone else was throwing away and create a safe space to utilize, and something that would bring us comfort, as well as a desire to even stay...

Foundations were laid....
And the first walls we began to form were for our vegetable garden, something most people have in Christchurch, The Garden City. Our vegetables, which had been living in old recycle bins, made obsolete by a new scheme for recycling implemented just prior to the earthquakes wherein each household received three bins on wheels, one for rubbish, one for recyclable paper, metal and glass and one for green stuff that really belongs on your garden anyway, but nonetheless, an almost perfect plan gone awry in the aftermath of chaos. But, leaving very portable bins from the old scheme of recycling that were just right for portable gardens for people like us, forced to move too much in order to find our economic stability in times of recession., we still had access to our own home grown vegetables and fruit trees. We just moved them with us; however, Brother John begins to alleviate the movable feast, by starting the first column...

Brother John eventually gets rid of that clothesline you may see in the picture and that is a pretty good story in its own right, it began our running banter about ‘Caveman language’, to be explained later.

One column became four pretty fast, not unlike the language.

Anyway, these were days of running around Christchurch City very close to our home and meeting strangers who never wanted to see another brick as long as they lived. But, we felt comfortable with our bricks, because a Caveman was building it. And Cavemen, build STRONG. And strong people recycle everything!!!


And put light stuff over your head.

And, sometimes hold their own heads....

And leave their unique stamp on things.

And use whatever they have available even if it does make them speak in unique languages.

IT is all worth it in the end...

But, it’s not over yet...there is always more....

ORDER out of CHAOS (After the Journey)

I remind myself that I am still using Ben Franklin’s process for reflecting on virtues in one’s life and am back round to ORDER. This was the virtue I was studying last time wherein Christchurch fell to the ground and ORDER did not seem possible anymore.

The journey I just took was an impromptu one inspired by feelings of claustrophobia and angst brought on by living in a city that is in CHAOS. I had to get out and chase rainbows.

While I was on this journey, I listened to what I said to others, others who had no personal involvement with the earthquakes, had only visited the CHAOS through the media, the same media that allows voices to predict the end of the world or show tsunamis gobbling up people in real time.

I found myself saying, I have to get out, I have to get out unless they (Christchurch City’s power structure) let me help soon!

The day after I returned home to Christchurch and planning to instrument my escape, I received a phone call from someone I had met about a year ago at another artist’s home. She said she had been asked by the City Council of Christchurch, along with an American business man to submit ideas on how to revitalize cultural and artistic pursuits in a city with its skirt down around its feet (she said something different, but I think in pictures and so, this is what I heard).

She asked me if I had any ideas on how to help Christchurch I would like to submit...had I not just been saying I would leave unless they let me help soon. The universe is so amazing...this is it; this is what I have been waiting for...some place to dump the ideas that plague me night and day since the first big shake up in September of last year.

ART HEALS.

‘Art heals by accepting the pain and doing something with it’ (Shaun McNiff in Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul).
McNiff points to what Nietzsche wrote in The Birth of Tragedy that when we are faced with the most dreadful circumstances, “art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live” (p. 4).

I do not agree with this because it sounds good, I agree with this because after 55 years of living through many types of trauma, tornadoes, divorce, death, bombings and now earthquakes, this has always been the only thing that helps me process these happenings, and the only process I have seen work for others around me.

It is. It is the healing that is most important to re-establish before even THINKING about doing any rebuilding. First, and foremost, every individual who has been present for these occurrences which in Christchurch is a collective misery, we must first, find an individual healing.

Turn off the media...tune into the soul of one’s self and learn to live again through artistic expression of the pain that has been experienced. This can happen through many ways beyond the traditional thought of Art being about drawing, painting, sculpting, music, writing, it is simply tactile and can be cooking, gardening, weaving, and stamp collecting, but bottom line, bottom, each person needs to be reminded that there is an artist inside themselves that must find a way to express themselves in order to process all that has happened.

And for Christchurch, there has been a lot happening. It is time that we provide a way for everyone to process the collective pain that is oppressing our community to the point where people like me jump in their car and chase rainbows and think seriously about just leaving.

I am fortunate to be able to do so. Many cannot go anywhere, and therefore, we must find a way to provide spaces all around the Cantabrian area to help every individual find a way to release the artist inside themselves which can process the ‘horror or absurdity of existence’.

And, what I have discovered about living here is that it is far easier to do so when I am allowed out of Christchurch every now and then, like time off for good behaviour. It is important to go outside of the devastation and reacquaint ourselves with nature that is not threatening to us. To rebuild our faith in the fact that we are not really all dead and dying, it just looks that way in Christchurch for the moment.

'This too, shall pass'.

But until it does, I will be working on creating a submittal for how to instrument some type of movement that might be injected into Christchurch City that will release its citizens to their own genius that creates a healing individually, then collectively that will eventually reflect itself back into the world as a dynamic tension of the greatest art imaginable, the art of healing.

Watch this space, I mean it, we have the perfect opportunity to re-create ourselves, I sure hope we take it and make it into a Southern Cross that guides all those navigating dark waters, into the reality of a land that can feel like home again or at least, a place we are willing to visit.

Christchurch rocks and I am rolling with it for now...that is as much ORDER as I can find on any given day in a land down under, down under, trying to remerge itself out of CHAOS.

Been on a Journey

Brother John and I took to the road without a plan, following our golden thread and landed at the end of a rainbow on the same road as a 'Peace Garden' in a bach on an orchard at the home of a special friend who is the ultimate 'care-giver'.

Feeling cared for is wonderful and awe inspiring and makes one feel fully human...or better, beyond human, transcendent. We arrived and the birds greeted us, the swallow did figure eight patterns over our heads, the fantail sat on the fence and said 'you are very big bugs' and the tui perched at the top of the tree and cried, 'where have ya been?' It was magical.

The rainbow persisted and every day held 'sun showers' where the rain appears as gentle diamonds falling to the earth, the time of day did not exist and each walk was effortless in the land of the truly living 'good enough'.

The radio was 'in cahoots' playing Lennon's 'Imagine' and right then, it was believable...the home fire burned gifted wood and the table we ate at was gifted, too, there was nothing missing except YOU.

So, how do you get there?

This journey started many years ago with a phone call from a stranger answering an ad to help look after my children and pets while I went away from New Zealand back to America. I knew no one in New Zealand to help me and wrote an ad and answered the phone to many voices for days and days and then, finally, one voice emerged like no other.

That voice is now my special friend who is the ultimate 'care-giver'...we gathered a huge history that pleases all of nature. Rainbows and birds know her well...I cannot reveal her name, for to do so would make her disappear, there are rules for special friends you see, they prefer to live anonymously...

And, she does, on a hill at the end of a rainbow with a happy heart and a warm fire and a bath tub outside of all the barriers we humans try to build...

And while she does, she looks after people in her community just enough to get by and live in the sky, like a bird...

Anyway, it helps to listen for voices you have never heard and befriend them...then...it pays to throw away maps and plans and follow the feeling in the pit of your stomach that says, 'this way'...a hard thing to do when you are used to having information before you do what you do...

But, when you do...you can fly!

My friend taught me how to fly and then, how to come back down to 'earth out' as she calls it...a term us birds know well, and well, the rest is a restful story of shaking off earthquakes, death and destruction, family feuds, financial worries, human noise, tornadoes and all the chaotic treasures a world can turn with a switch inside that says,

'Brother John, it is time to take a road trip!'

Just do it, and we did, and now we have a story we can only share a part of, but the whole thing resides right where it belongs, in the hearts of friends who could never be better no matter what...

Thanking you, my special friend, and thinking of you and all the 'yous' who did not get to journey...take one! It's a 'good enough' plan just to do it! There are many gardens out there.

Angel or Demon

Unconditional surrender to the occurrence of human foibles, giving hugs when actually, you want to pull out the imaginary guns and be done with someone, stepping over that feeling and wrapping arms around that someone is the closest thing to freedom I have ever felt.

Why do I forget that?

Constantly I am surrounded by the mediated conversations to kill someone else, and even though I prefer the peaceful solution, fairly often, I resort to mental warfare...

For my part, I have decided I am fairly human...and, that it is this aspect which I have to struggle to over-ride, the ‘kill the enemy attitude’ for my supposed survival. It’s a humble lesson every time, but somehow I manage to get there, I work at practising the sooner than later mentality, but then, I get side-tracked in the midst of mayhem and earthquakes sometimes.

However, the ‘other’ party has to agree or I can find myself hugging the air, or worse, flat on my back from the blow of another's stubborn right to stay angry. I like the saying that ‘anger’ is one letter short of ‘danger’. And yet, sometimes I forget this adage for a few days...and then, something comes loose in the cerebrum and I am thankfully inhuman again, almost ‘other worldly’ speaking peace and love and turning into an angel.

Angel or Demon, I decide when I remember to, and even when I don’t.

A Household of Four (A Lament)

I am the only one in a household of four people at the moment, I say at the moment because a household in today’s world is for sure lucky to exist at all, and then, the numbers rise or fall depending on whether you live in a place that has problems with refugees who need your help, visits from relatives or close proximity to enemy occupied territory and some householders get shot in their own bedrooms while unarmed and then the numbers deplete quickly and it’s all relevant to the numbers in the household, but that is beside the point, maybe, maybe not, and I am the only one in a household of four people at the moment, up for hours while everyone is sleeping, doing what I do, feeding and cleaning bowls for the household pets I have collected, by saying I do, or simply, just by doing what I’m supposed to....oh, yeah, that is why I prompted my blog to read ‘I Decide’...because I don’t, until ‘I Do’ and I know it as well as anybody.


Anyway, after I have wiped down the kitchen bench (counter-top for those from my past) and remembered to add a little bleach to disinfect the cutting boards and the sinks, I became distracted and wiped down the faces of the cabinets and while doing so, I reflected on the faces I see surrounding me on any given day hours after feeding the dogs.

Dog is god spelled backwards and it is best I do not forget that, lest I not know how to spell.

When was the last time I added bleach to clean, and why do I do it now and why do I do it at all and who told me to do it and why do I believe I have to, or if anyone does, why not everyone?

Ahhhhhhh, she scrubs the paste quince off the door closest to the oven as there was where she left it to finish canning one day last week with not enough time to remove the evidence.

I take a deep breath and contemplate I surely have lost my mind to think so much could be learnt from the debris left around me to orchestrate by myself for the benefits of a household of four and then try to write about it.

A Step Aside

I am sitting here in my part of the world, as usual, go figure, you are where you are, aye, and wondering how long the American public will allow what has become obvious to those who have been fortunate to escape the mind numbing propaganda of justified murder, how long must it go on before the great nation of America rises up, and takes back their own minds?


I do not believe the American people are murderers, I believe their government has been allowed to be murderers for as long as there have been people to call themselves Americans. I use to be one (an American), but now, I am just a ‘Diaspora’, and happy to be displaced, because I have no consciousness that includes war, or the taking of a human life as a solution for anything.

War and murder are the death to all creative acts that might flourish in the face of an absolute that does not frighten me, an absolute that really causes no harm, an absolute that was unavailable for me to voice while living inside the boundaries of American politics for the 45 years I was held hostage by not knowing there truly is an absolute solution, which is:

No more war.

I know there must be many more people who feel like I did while living in America...a voice with no ability to project above the rising storm of a collective ideology that there are always ‘good enough’ reasons to take the lives of others. I found it difficult to express the idea of ‘no more war’ while living inside American territory, which territory has been happily joined by too much of the world, and not because their numbers are greater than those who honestly believe in an absolute of ‘no more war’, but because they currently control the most powerful government in the world.

My fellow Americans, it is time to tell your government in the most creative acts you will ever have the opportunity to think up, how at this point and time, because that is the only one we are in control of... may you reign in the unconscious who lead you...and, impress upon them an absolute truth that is easily seen by those of us who have been fortunate enough to contemplate it, there is absolutely nothing ‘good enough’ about a decision to take human life to settle human differences. That is just a complete lack of imagination....

No more war.

War, ‘what is it good for?’

Absolutely nothing.

Humility

I know, I was going to drop it, but I can’t. It comes with the turf. Starting over doesn’t even sound good after eating a dose of ‘humble pie’ this week, because someone saw my morality board and decided to beat me with it. Thankfully, it was only a mental beating, but it still hurts.


Perhaps it all started when my office was moved to my dining room, a very public space, because my office space was needed as an extra bedroom for company and so, my private space became public, just like publishing something on the internet.

I have always felt that people who have an office to go perform whatever they do out of sight of others were fortunate. Now, I really do, as what I do in my office, means a lot to me, but when put on public view, it doesn’t stack up for much, as it isn’t physical enough for some, and I would have to agree, that reading and writing are very sedentary activities, unless you go jogging on the coastline wearing an ipod wherein you cannot hear spluttering engines and take the risk of being mowed down by a passing airplane running out of fuel. Excuse me for jumping from the physical to the deadly; it’s a knee jerk response after being beaten up mentally.

When people walk in and out of your temporary office and see that blank look on your face and sitting perfectly still, they automatically think it is a good time to break into your world and fill your space with whatever they think. Unfortunately, I have a habit of just looking at them blankly, as I really am somewhere else, grappling with metaphors and analogies, and when they talk to me and I do not talk back, the other parties now privy to walking through my office begin to take offense. I am not listening to them; I am being rude, self absorbed and not a very good person.

O....O....O.

I try to love them through it, I really do. But, when I try to explain that I really didn’t hear one word they just said, so deep into my own world had I been, it gets even trickier. Now, I am justifying my existence. Well...it is humbling to see what people think of what you are doing that means so much to you, but nothing to them because they chose to hold no value for reading and writing. And, I would have to agree, for most of the time, it looks like a very empty occupation, but every once in awhile there comes a sentence, a sentence so ripe and full of all the words you have been dying to hear, granted, they are words from yourself to yourself and certainly that should never be more important than the person standing in your temporary office berating you for not being more cognizant.

‘Darlin’ ain’t ya listening?’

‘No, I isn’t.’

Well, to those who know me well, they understand why I am not listening; I am not listening because I have gone somewhere else for the moment, to return for sure with a whole lot of words about something. But, when my office space suddenly went public, I did not anticipate the ramifications it would present on the psyche of my visitors and myself...it made them feel like I was ignoring them and just not interested in them or anyone else, but myself, and it made me feel rather agitated about being interrupted all the time.

‘You selfish sister!’

‘No, I isn’t’

‘I am writing this for you.’

‘But, I don’t read!’

O...O...O

I hadn’t thought of that.