Belated Mother’s Day poem / slightly early stay in bed new moon in Taurus blessings 🌊🌹
The Mary Oliver video got cut off so here is all of that poem.
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice- though the whole house
began to tremble and you felt the old tug
at your ankles. “Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Video # 6 got cut off -argh- but just know the video shows a loop and we are all interconnected to everything that is. Eye to the universes and look within for all. You and your feelings are so important. K bye love you.
On the last full moon in Libra I booked a haircut that turned out nice. I went to a friend’s afterwards, found myself crying at my reflection in the mirror that no longer looked like me. I had changed irrevocably. Again. When I said I was going to go to the closest barber shop after I left her place she said I’ll go with you. I cried again at the kindness and total acceptance with which my people embrace my process. I got all my hair buzzed, save an 1/2 inch or so. I’d wanted to do this before I died. It was done.
I have loved my hair. I have felt trapped by my hair. My hair is an ongoing experiment. Maybe hair holds our grief. It’s also not important. Whatever. I document the journey.
If you scroll down enough you will see just a tiny fraction of the versions of me I have been publicly since I got on this app. I don’t delete much (but I def edit freely bc it’s my page) no matter how cringey bc it is an exercise in loving all those past versions of self.
But I am definitely not those past versions even though I love them all. We had a wild Scorpio full moon last Friday and I’m a Scorpio rising and the only life I have ever known is death and rebirth and transmutation and learning the most through my own life experience.
I’m happiest in school. Whatever kind of school. Learning, questioning, sharing knowledge, expanding.
Last month I finished level two of a year long Spiritual Herbalism apprenticeship with Empress Karen Rose of Sacred Vibes Apothecary in Brooklyn.
Of all the schools i have ever known this was maybe the deepest, most intuitive, most transformative school I have been a part of. I felt deeply seen. It was also very uncomfortable at times.
I have deeply loved all my schools. Some of whom are YOU or other humans, some are the plants I have walked with, or my animal friends. I really dug deep with Ginger, the plant I personally worked with. Ginger brought me back home to myself. ✨
Slides 3-4 from my installation “4-Page Letter” last fall on Governors Island with Forest for Trees collective. A love letter to the plants that held me through transformation.
Slide 8 from evolutionaryherbalism.com
Uranus, the disruptor, left Taurus where it’s been since 2018 and today is now in Gemini for a long bit so that seems as good as any a time to come back to this forum that I alternately struggle with, practice being seen in, and find out how you all are.
@briannalhb keeps creating art and inviting deathworkers and artists and death doula-artists to join in the spaces she creates and I’m grateful for her. She made this book and my installation from 2024 “Intergenerational Home”, which isn’t even on my website yet is in this lovely physical object dedicated to this very human thing we do. Make art out of the unimaginable. Many lovely humans are documented in this book contemplating how we do this thing called life. You can get this book online. You can support all these artists. You can make your own art. You can transmute.
Everything is possible.
Gratitude to Shinnecock Nation and @mashousestudio for giving me space to create.
Post Full moon in Taurus makes me wanna holler photo dump.
Apparently Uranus is retrograding back into Taurus right now to finish up an 8 year cycle that will complete in April. You know that Taurus house cycle you’ve been working on - how it’s been all over the place. Yeah that one, we are supposed to learn all those lessons and finish that up. I’m personally glad to see the end of it but also grateful for the lessons.
Just pretty moon shots, pretty art pics, family, bk art school things. Identifying plants and trees all around me. Noticing the medicine that wants to be found there.
Also I forgot how much I love Home Depot. I really leaned in during pandemic and momentarily forgot you can wander these home/life improvement aisles whenever you need inspiration or very specific screws.
This Taurus full moon has been nothing short of abundant. And also isn’t it wild that we also have to work on being able to receive a good thing when we get it? That the work continues, even when we get exactly what we desire?? Life is wildly beautiful and a tad absurd.
Join us for an evening of discussion about grief practice and how it makes for a potent love practice
November 12 @5pm
#africanamericanstudies
#wesleyan
#africanamerican
@reshamgram
A post for all the things.
Polls are open NYC. Let’s do our beautiful loving tough hearted thing and vote for like the only decent choice. Vote for the cutie Libra with big dreams who has all the hot girls feeling hopeful again.
(Also don’t vote for Sliwa but pls do enjoy the Glazing clip, bc it’ll make you laugh.)
Also!
Come see my art, 4-Page Letter, this Saturday Nov 1, in a group show dreamed up by my love @ah_zohreh And check out her magic paintings and all the other very cool art! Manhattan.
And i wrote a piece on Substack. It’s a love letter to Libras, Scorpio season, my mother, D’Angelo, my first kiss. It’s a love letter mashup.
Ok thats all. Lots of love. Write a love letter. Make hot girls hopeful again.
I also wanted to tell you about the Queen of the Night. The flowers of this cactus only last a day or two and only bloom at night. I relate to this plant deeply. It happens maybe once or twice a year and I caught these beauties yesterday night in my home. Smell like gardenias, jasmine and vanilla.
Perhaps they bloom when there’s something to celebrate.
If you’re in the Wesleyan University / Middletown, CT area on 11/12 come hear me talk about the art of endings, grief, loving, and the process behind my latest installation, 4-Page Letter. But more importantly it’s a workshop where we will have more doing, less talking. More listening to our own hearts and uttering out our greatest dreams, fears and griefs out loud. To give power to the dreams and to release power from the fears.
The grief kind of fuels it all, I sometimes think. I wonder about the grief. Being conscious of it is a wild ride.
All thanks to an ongoing collaboration with the important grief studies work of @zsimone_thompson_ 💜
Second is a clip from a love-letter writing workshop I held in the installation a few weeks back with accompaniment by jazz multi-instrumentalist Tomin. They’re not on insta but you should check out their album, A Willed and Conscious Balance.
Lastly, the Futurism group show that my work is part of ends this weekend. @forestfortreescollective has put so much loving labor into this show. They have collected some amazing artists together plus there’s lots of other art things happening on Gov Island this weekend.
Check it out, be moved, fall in love with yourself, add your letter to the wall. 💜
Sat-Sun 11-5.
A little something for me / for you because I already feel this Aries full moon (on Monday) energy. Or whatever else is happening. Last video is maybe just me talking to me.
The math aesthetic tt is prob the best Internet thing I’ve seen all week. IFKYK. also if you know I hope you are ok now.
Also what if the reason we want a Free Palestine so badly is because we know in the future version of this place it is already true. What if everything we do matters deeply.
Sending love.
(Vid 8 text cut out. Said “This is the sound of soul music in Vietnam from 1970”)
Doing a workshop / talk / performance this Saturday out with @forestfortreescollective on Governor’s Island. 2 pm. Nolan Park 7B.
It’ll be in my current installation piece 4-Page Letter part of the lovely Futurism group show.
Come through and write love letters while listening to jazz while grieving while learning about one or two plant friends while making a human one or two. Donation based. Open to all.
Bring some nourishment and a comfy soft thing to sit on.
Coming out of my eclipse hole/portal to give my halfway through eclipse szn recommendations - get a haircut, a massage, eat yummy food, do anything you can to END THIS FUCKING GENOCIDE NOW - SPEAK UP EVERYWHERE PLS, see eclipse portal art on Loving and other future technologies for survival on Governor’s Island, just to name a few. Take care, be brave, and let things change. 💜
4 Page Letter - An interactive art installation is currently available for viewing! Its my answer to a culture of despair and disposability. No person and no part of a person is disposable. I took a love I had kept hidden and upon making it physical, public and letting light hit it — it did some pretty cool things. You should try it. It’s technically my work but it’s made up of all the energy of all the people who I love current, past, future. All my people who hold me and love me from near and far. All the people who communicate with me in all the myriad ways. In person, across oceans and technology, across dream waves, across timelines.
I thank all the plants I have walked with in my Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship with @sacredvibesapothecary and how they have held me this year. I thank my teacher Empress Karen Rose and all the apprentices who have also walked this journey alongside me. This art is also a love letter to the plant medicines we all have access to and desperately need, who also desperately need us.
A sweet person showed me their goosebumps on a hot day to emphasize the feeling of deep recognition they felt reading one of my love poems on vintage sari silk. People have started to leave their own love letters on lined paper taped to the wall. Tears have flowed. I pulled out the grief strips from my 2022 collaborative installation Holding Space because they just make sense next to love letters. Grief and love are two sides of the same coin.
This is why I do all this.
The group show Futurism is wonderful! See all the art in the @forestfortreescollective show. Public hours are 11-5pm Sat + Sunday, and the exhibition is viewable by appmt (dm or email [email protected] to schedule). Up until 10/12. (Thx for reading all these words!)
