yep… it’s that time again. Time for a new website, that is. As of tomorrow, I’ll be announcing my new metaphysical arts website. This blog can revert back to its original purpose as a creative writing, crazy poetry, here I am, here’s what I’m thinking and feeling now thing.

With Mars in Gemini, I require an outlet for that brash, brazen, ballsy voice. Gemini is duality; two public identities. I also hold space for my more deeply considered material, my quietly serious voice, which hasn’t felt quite at home here. When I began this blog it was called ‘Truth is a Crazy Poet,’ and that energy has never shifted. I do like it. It’s part of what I am.

In fact, I love it. Just try to make me stop!

But the truth is, it’s not what I really need to be presenting to folk as a reason to trust me with their hearts, which is what my particular line of work mandates.
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I’ve come to a momentous decision, and it’s been growing in me a long time, since I read ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ a few years ago. Having changed my name once already, I know it’s a big deal, and I apologize in advance for the inconvenience (and it is inconvenient) to my friends and beloveds.

Still, I’ve been Phoenix for a long time now, and there’s a limit to how long anyone can be comfortable as a Phoenix. It’s a turbulent path! Sooner or later, I have to just, well, Bee.

My birth name, Debra, means ‘The Bee’. I’ve always loved that, about as much as I disliked the name itself. Not that it’s a bad name, it’s a fine name! I like it fine on other Debras and Debbies I know. But it happened to be the commonest name for girls in my age group; it felt like a generic name, a non-identifier.
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It’s a new year, astrologically speaking. Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox, also known as the first day of spring, also known as the day the Sun moves into the first sign of the zodiac (Aries).

Time to start new things, discard old ones. For every new thing, an old thing has to go away to make room for it. No, that’s not an argument for mandatory retirement, or for older folk to ‘know their place’ (quite the contrary). We’re all the gods of our own creations, and we’re not here to make way for others, but to maximize the potential of our own selves. There is room for everybody, even if we have to make room for ourselves by inventing new spaces into which to unfold.
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It’s the one hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day today, and because I have been procrastinating writing so long, I’m going to use the day to motivate myself. And because I have been procrastinating writing so long, this is very long!

Tonight, there is an event on Hornby I’d love to be at, and if I still lived there, I’d be all over it. But instead, I am here, home alone (I did receive an invitation to read today at an event on Mount Washington, but my car isn’t mountain-worthy and I was unable to hook up with anybody else going, not knowing any of them and all.

I miss my island! I miss my community. That’s the truth. Still, I feel so many exciting openings beckoning in this community, I don’t imagine I will be lacking for opportunities. But. It’s not Hornby.
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Update: Yipes, I posted the wrong song link… I’ve corrected it, you can find the actual song here. Sorry about that…

This song has possessed me. New songs can do that, but this one especially. It’s rare for me to write songs inspired by a world situation; I’m normally more self and relationship-focused and inward-looking with my songwriting. Only three times have world events inspired me to write a song.

The first song, ‘The Women Are Rising,’ was inspired by the Montreal Massacre… the second, ‘Red Hands‘ (this version is from the TreeRoots Revolution CD, “Deeper Than Grass“) was written the day after they started bombing Afghanistan.

My newest song, which I wrote yesterday, is called “The Story in My Head” and you can hear it here. I posted the lyrics in a previous post, here.
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Apparently I haven’t been posting often enough to keep up with my daily art photos over on flickr; I’m way behind now. So I’m going to just post them all and get them out of the way. This way I can post them in a larger size too. Photo essay!

I’ve started the next year’s worth of photos already and I’d like to start the new year without being way behind on the last year. And I want to show them ALL! Unfortunately, this blogging software doesn’t allow me to effectively display photos; in particular, I can’t post captions under a particular photo. If you’re interested in seeing captions, you can click on a given image and go see the original caption on my flickr page.

And if you just want to see the originals for the last half-year on flickr in a nice slideshow, you can go here:

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for Tempest Grace Gale

I am pixelated,
lacy fronds of frost encasing
the heart of my matter
etched in stone patterns of grief
for she whose existence
we all depended on
now ruthlessly bereft
of future

she, robbed of life;
we, denied the gifts
she had still to bestow

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Tempest Grace Gale
Feb 5, 1984 – Nov 17, 2009
murdered in paradise

Hear her music on myspace

Once again, I find myself thinking of, feeling for, wishing for my children. I speak to this feeling on this dark night as we move toward Scorpio New Moon. There is a time and a place for such a subject, and here we are, now.

It’s not their fault that they are who they are (ie, my children). They didn’t ask to be born, nor did they ask for the storm I called into being partway through their childhoods.

It’s true, I confess, at my behest a tempest tore through the fabric of my family, sundered children from ancestors. To become a better mother, I chose to face my demons.

I knew not what I did; I was not ready; they were not ready.

They raged like escaping a cage, or Pandora’s box. And lock, stock and shock, I was overwhelmed, underwater, lost in an inundation of pain, an avalanche of tears, a phantasmagoria of multidimensional experiences. I saw my schizophrenic brother in the hospital, and I knew that could be me.

I was careful, I channeled my crazy into songs, stories, poems, drawings, tears, personal growth study and creative conversation.

Still, it had to have been hard to be my kids. I feel for them. Not that it was so easy to be me, but it was their needs I most longed to meet, and I grieved as I washed away on waves of creation.

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Oh what a strange journey life continues to become, never ending, ever changing! Full of zigs and zags and unexpected turnings. Just when I have the near future nicely mapped, it jogs to reveal some new vista, unplanned, a sur-prize.

I had a sweet plan in place to travel down to Seattle this week, pick my sweetie up on the plane, spend some time visiting with a friend… but disaster befell the friend’s son (at whose home we were meant to stay). So, the plan has been ditched and it’s back to business as usual, me at home, he on the bus to find his own winding way, calloo, callay.

Business as usual is a jog in the path, when you are expecting the unexpected. Still, I’m partly relieved to be relieved of the task of all that packing and driving long miles in predicted heavy weather.

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My new classes are proving to be just as much fun as I had hoped; the bright eyes and willing hearts of my students inspire me and re-ignite my passion for this work. All right!

Astrology is so much more than a belief system; in point of fact, belief is not required. One stunned soul said to me after I did an in-depth reading for him as a gift, “I want you to know, I don’t believe in astrology, and that hasn’t changed. But [long pause] I have to admit it was right on.”
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Raw food. In the last ten days since I began this raw journey, everybody I’ve talked about it with has an opinion. Those in the know, who have tried it, the choir so to speak, are all supportive and yeah! Others’ opinions range from carefully neutral to openly skeptical.

One friend called raw food ‘celibacy for the palate.’ At first, my response to that was along the lines of, “You haven’t had a good raw meal, obviously!” because oh my my, I suffer from no lack of yumminess. I’m equipped! I have the cookbooks, the dehydrator, the food processor, the blender, the seed grinder, and I’m using them all to good effect. And having fun, too.

But l’m starting to get what he meant by that. There’s an addictive quality to the comfort foods, the melting cheeses, the breads and cooked grains, sauces thickened with flour, meats, processed foods. Those foods provide a kind of throatgasmic satisfaction of a different order than the kinds of deliciosity I am now discovering.

Celibacy is not quite the right word for this way of eating, however. If food is sex, then cooked comfort foods are porn, and this is the real deal. My body loves me while I eat this way. It responds (so quickly!) with more energy, clearer skin and clearer senses. And that love is reciprocated, more and more. We have some work to do on our relationship still, my body and me; I sit at the computer far too long at a stretch without stretching or moving and I’m terribly hooked on any and all means of distraction from the visceral experience of this now, this moment, my breath, my self.
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