three sugars please ~

inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about

i sit quietly like the earth

The very center of your Heart is where Life begins,
the most beautiful place on earth.
—Rumi

imagination is more important than knowledge

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.
The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit
to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Quotes by Albert Einstein
Art by Edward Hopper

this is the golden age

You want to know what scares people? Success.

Success is a threat. Why should this be? Why are so many willing to forsake their destiny?

It takes courage to fail over and over and over again—and still believe in yourself. To pursue your destiny despite everything and everyone that you will have release along the way, because there are too many people who are embittered and want you to stay by their side and quit, just as they did. And talk ish cause what else is there to do when you do nothing at all. To choose distractions over focus, to choose destruction over creation, to choose emptiness over fulfillment, to never cross the invisible line, to stay in a prison of your own making.

I know this well.

Success scares people because it reminds them of what they gave up for no reason other than they were too scared to take the risk and too cheap to invest in themselves. How easy it is to quit your life before you die, to go through the motions, to settle for a lesser fate. And then they hate all those who do well, forever jealous of the person who had the courage to fail.

Jealousy is the mark of the insecure mind. For anyone you consider a competitor rather than a colleague, you are acknowledging the fact that you see yourself coming up short. And it’s strange, that desire to compete and compare and to put yourself on a hierarchy, as though you could ever understand. What it takes to succeed. And I don’t mean to survive. I mean to thrive, to grow, to flourish, to blossom into a meadow that does not begin and does not end but cycles in seasons, blooming in the spring and dying in the fall and coming around time and again until death takes all.

I keep thinking of this, because a bigger picture slowly reveals itself. Pull back the lens and see life for what it is. A window of opportunity. A chance to live your dream. Because, let’s get real, this is two thousand and twelve. It is the Golden Age. And every Golden Age is the tipping point because waves crest and peak and crash upon the shore and we are riding the bubbly white foam right about now. The time is now, and now is all we have.

Success isn’t easy, but life isn’t for the weak of heart or mind or spirit. And death comes, inevitably. And when it comes, as I have seen, a terror sets in, remorse unlike any other, karma by a lesser name. Last night I was writing in my head, writing the fourth book, and it kept me awake. This story is so dark, and everyone around me is in the deepest kind of denial and why, why would they deny the truth? Except that it means they know they were powerless.

But not I, that has never been me. Power tingles at my fingertips, strange I should use a keyboard to unleash my energies. But it is not by accident that I should write. Because writing is salvation and writing is freedom. And when they are dead, then the story will be told, but before then I do not wait, I have my destiny to uphold.

flowww ~

I borrow nothing.
I don’t want anything from anybody.
I flow through human beings.
Love is my only companion.
—Rumi

Nine of Pentacles

The woman on the Nine of Pentacles is taking a leisurely stroll
through the gardens of her estate.
She is clearly a lady of refinement and grace,
so it is incongruous to see on her left hand a bird
trained to hunt and kill on command.
Falconry is an unusual hobby for a gentlewoman,
but it is the key to the special nature of this card.

On one hand, the Nine of Pentacles represents all that is most gracious,
high-minded and civilized. Art, music and other forms of beauty
are very much part of our physical world (Pentacles).
Coins are present in this scene, but they are toward the ground.
The business of life is important,
but we don’t have to focus on practical matters all the time.
We can also enjoy the finer things of life.
In readings, the Nine of Pentacles can imply an interest in these areas.
It is also a sign that you may need to reject the coarse or offensive
and seek the highest.

The Nine of Pentacles can also be a sign of discipline and self-control.
This woman enjoys her cultured life because she has mastered her baser instincts.
Her impulses work for her because they do not rule her.
The falcon symbolizes all that is dark and unruly in human nature.
Our shadow side can serve us well, but only when it is directed.
Sometimes the Nine of Pentacles suggests that you must show
restraint and self-control if you are to achieve your best efforts.
You may have to “sacrifice” for the moment, but the results will be worth it.

This card is also a sign of self-reliance.
Sometimes you must trust our own ability to handle a situation.
Resist the temptation to let others do for you.
You need to take matters into your own hands.
Our elegant lady has done just that.
She trusted in her own grit and determination,
and now she enjoys all the best life has to offer.

let me live, love and say it well in good sentences

And by the way, everything in life is writable about
if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
― Sylvia Plath

one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower

Damn Good Advice

Creation is one thing. Communication is another. The two are often conflated, mistaken as one in the same, when discussing art. It seems as though as the audience, we have forgotten our role. We are not the reason for the art, though we would like to think it so.

Creation is a personal endeavor, coming from an array of needs, be it spiritual or financial, aesthetic or emotional, physical or intellectual, or any other reason. The artist has a purpose, and that purpose is their own. Ideally, I imagine they would like this purpose to translate into our experience, but that can never really be so. At best, there is an affinity between purposes—for each member of the audience has their own needs, and seeks out greater understanding through communion with the art.

Thus it is really communion, and not communication, that happens when the audience observes the art. There is a shared space, something that only exists between the art work and the observer. And it is this space that the audience then tries to communicate, to understand what they experienced when looking at someone else’s Idea….

Read the Full Story Here

what power has love but forgiveness

Life is valuable—when completed by the imagination. And then only.

Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.

It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.

Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.

Quotes by William Carlos Williams

The Kingdom of Eternal Night

And so it is, and so it has been that this blog has become a diary of sorts. It is a refuge, an oasis, a sacred space where I have found the integrity that had been stripped from me. It is an exploration of the dark and the light, the sick and the healing, the curses and the blessings that have surrounded me since I was born.

It is this blog that has given me a new sense of understanding of the Digital Age, not just what it means to speak freely to the world, but the courage it requires to sign my name to my word. I have no aliases, I play no games, I hide from nothing because I no longer fear my pain.

Once this blog became my diary, I discovered something I didn’t understand—that in being me, I do not need to do anything else. As this blog has taken hold, I have released myself from the illusions and lies that held me prisoner, and in pardoning myself of crimes that I did and did not commit, I have discovered that freedom is the only way to live.

I live to write. I write to live. I live for photographs. I take no photographs except those that I find. I am horrified by the idea of documenting my life as that which lies in my immediate purview for what I experience is so much greater than the small scope of my travels on earth. And to that end, the Internet has become my Oracle, guiding me to images of life that I know, even though I did not live them until the moment my eyes cast upon their form. The images I select tell as much about me as any words ever could—perhaps more in that they speak all languages. And, as you know, or shall soon discover, we are moving into a post-literate society.

Isn’t it beautiful and ironic and amazing to realize that we are returning to our essence, to a world of signs and symbols and oral history. Granted, that oral history is now video, but it remains worth noting that the death of print is the harbinger of this brave new world.

And yet… I could never give up words, nor give up print, even though I fully embrace the Digital Age. I have always felt that I was born at the turning point, and that I at once live in two worlds, the old and the new school, and I love them both for all their beauty and critique them both for all their arrogance, and I benefit by virtue of all that is possible because at no other time in history could I live on my terms and no one else’s.

I answer only to myself, and that is a blessing, for I know the curse that was implanted in me at birth, and I fear it not because my powers are granted by the Universe.

And one of those powers has been and shall always be the desire to communicate, to share, to connect, to create community. And I did not know, until I began, that what you seek is seeking you, and so it happens that I am.

As I consider the future is now, and now is the time, and time is an illusion, I create the world in which I choose to live. And that world is the world of my heart and mind and soul manifest. And that creature is both an essence and an existence, and they are complementary because what was done unto me is very dark and heavy.

And this darkness weighs on me and I accept it. For we all have our demons, and finally, now, I can give mine a hug. Because, two years ago I drew a card and the lesson was “Dealing with Demons” and the first thing I realized was that demons were sick energies that need love in order to heal. And I was disgusted and charmed and confused by this, because I couldn’t so much as wrap my arms across my chest and give myself a hug, let alone love the demons that dwelled beneath my breast. But I never forgot that lesson, even though I had no idea how it would become expressed.

It is both this blog, which is my daily meditation, and my novel(s) which have allowed me to express and accept and make peace with the darkness and to accept that who I am is not for everyone, particularly not those who are afraid of themselves. And that makes me sad, partially because I still possess the pathetic desire to be loved by all, but more than that, it makes me sad because I hate to see that kind of self hatred in anyone else. I feel it, with a kind of empathy that has no boundaries, in the way that spirits can enter my space without resistance. Because the boundaries around my ego were so completely violated, first by a shocking proximity to death, second by predators masquerading as parents, but no matter anymore.

All blessings are curses and vice versa. And the curse has blessed me with the ability to know things very few people wish to talk about. But then I realize, if only one person wishes to speak with me, I am a lucky girl. And there is at least one person, Miss Fitts, and she rocks my world. To imagine that we speak about suicide so calmly, so clearly, so deeply, so much so as to come to the knowledge of parallel universes, other dimensions, and things which mankind cannot prove but the brain can experience—ahh, this is why I am here. This is why all of this happened to me. This is why I don’t ever need to ask why—because I live in faith. I live fearless. I believe.

And so it is that something has happened and things have changed and I see that there are two forces working together at this time. There is the darkness and there is the light and both need to be expressed, but in order to become manifest and pure in their essence, I separate the two to develop in their own space, and perhaps the day shall come when they unite. But today is not that day.

Today is the day that I introduce my other half. The Kingdom of Eternal Night, my new blog, and the future of Miss Rosen, Sara, and me. Is that like the trinity? The Mother, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirit? God is so Good, there are no words for it.

The Kingdom of Eternal Night

watch with glittering eyes the whole world

Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
—Roald Dahl

the only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad

I am not strange, I am just not normal.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels:
it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

It is good taste, and good taste alone,
that possesses the power to sterilize
and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am hallucinogenic.

Quotes by Salvador Dail

the blue nile

The Nile, forever new and old,
Among the living and the dead,
Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled.

—Longfellow
Christus. The Golden Legend. Pt.I