In Your ‘Owl’ Sweet Way !!

Baked lamb on pita with fresh tomatoes and jalapeño. hummus and homemade ‘Rosemary, garlic. lemon, olive oil and ‘California honey’ sauce!’ A dollop of Sriracha.

Kamakiri

“It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.”John Steinbeck ~ The Log from the Sea of Cortez,

Kamakiri praying mantis (Japanese)

While cleaning the pool,

brushing the autumn leaves away,

I looked down to see Kamakiri !

Silently floating.

Away to the stars goes this pearl !

So current a message,

symbolic and ritualistic,

of a little green body

acknowledging this season.

A Day of Courage

Feeling as powerful as an active volcano of accomplishment.

Women gathered on the hill. Standing on the grass and dirt. They were silent in the breeze. Waiting. Dressing in gold, red and brown flowing dresses. A cotton scarf placed around her head. Thin material with sequins and graceful threads wrapped around a mummy enfolded.

“Into the tomb I must now go?

The fear of such a place she thought,

“Will they put me there. Alone there I will be. What, will they forget me too?”

A whisper in her ear spoke,

“No you will not go there. You have suffered enough.”

She was free .

Buddha in our front yard

Courage

silent courage

following through

alone

what is greater than this ?

courage is an effort

friend

notice the silent courage of others

it is beyond words

ritualistic gesture

Now being presented: The Haggus Society, Edges and Curves July 1 – Sept. 30, 2015

As a ritualistic gesture eating ones power animal, or totem, is practiced globally around the world. I won’t even go down the pew aisle of what the body and blood of Christ is all about. It is an act that empowers us. At church, in the amazon jungle or …wherever the unconscious and the conscious dance that voodoo dance.

Over the years I have done this dance with the Praying Mantis. In a dream I had, there was a bowl of sweet and sour praying mantis soup. Ingesting my totem is ingesting into my conscious mind …my unconscious. I bet that makes you feel like you’re upside down under water. Praying Mantis teaches me about life, death and rebirth. She teaches me about love and the continuity of life. She shows me that family and friends are not as dependable as the sun in the sky or the pattern of the cosmos. Standing tall and silent is a power gesture of her power and I make it my power. Praying Mantis is a beautiful nature colored creature. This art piece is my expression through art of my dream. I used things around the house and the computer to create the piece; cardboard, acrylic, watercolor / photo shop, printer via the computer. Four golden buttons from my mothers collection; items that I touch and use every day. Embracing around the piece is a dark green handmade Paper Mache’ frame made from recycled paper. I like to compose and then compress a lot of information into my essays and art that brings forth an archetype, myth or a thread for the possibility of communication between our mysterious collective unconscious.

http://hudleyflipside.org/my-art-story/

Child in the Dark.

Questioning change and our contemporary world… I feel is a healthy thing to do. It may not be part of the Status quo to see through the eyes of my two friends here, but it is wonderfully real and takes me to many a dark midnight, lit by their friendly fires of wisdom.

Unknown to one another Goethe and Blake meet in anathematizing Newton.
~ Great Writings of Goethe, Stephen Spender

Night Thoughts;

You I pity, twice unhappy stars, Being lovely, blessed with bright effulgence, Gladly shedding light for ships in danger, Yet by gods and mortals unrewarded: Love you cannot, never yet knew love! But incessantly eternal hours Move your ranks through vast celestial spaces. O, what distant journeys you’ve completed Since, reposing in my loved one’s arms, You and midnight wholly I forgot.

~ Goethe, Translated By Michael Hamburger.

The Death of the Virgin 1803 William Blake 1757-1827 Presented by the executors of W. Graham Robertson through the Art Fund 1949 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05899

I take two pills as symbolic of something more…and yes, I take them whenever the two pills present their medicine to me. I have gobbled them down like a feverish child in the dark. Wondering why they are there and why they have inspired me so. In fact, I was just deep in thought wondering why I love them so. Holding nothing of my usual shyness or mistrust against them ever. But how can two symbolic pills be them?

One is William Blake, and one is Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. One English and one German. They fill me from the inside out making; sense out of life, light out of darkness and hope out of failure.

I am not an expert on either one. I have many books about them. I reflect on their work, and I often only need one very small pill, of either of them, to awaken my healing to something better than the mundane life I often live.

To anticipate answers in a creative spark. Their art and words open onto me as if a wonderful knowing of a strange land forgotten. They know imagination and all the powers there of.

This is the medicine in their pills to me. Their comprehensive approach to life is put forth in their creations. I will continue to take them as my extramundane pills.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/red-pill-blue-pill/

Mary O’Hare

“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee.” Pg 19 Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter House -Five, The Children’s Crusade, A Duty-Dance with Death.

Reading out loud the first chapter… to an innocent person of 40 something, I think upon my duty in life. Simple it is a life that is to honor and house a new children’s crusade. Fold laundry, cleaning toilets and spying around corners; I do for them. Books, CD’s and games galore fill this woman’s crusade. OK Mary O’Hare?

The Meaning of life…

“From the cupola of the Church of Our Lady, I saw the sad ruins among the beautiful city buildings; the church sexton praised the architect for having built the bomb proof church and cupola. Then the sacristan, musing about the ruins that lay all around us, said critically, using few words: ‘The devil has done this!’ ” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Pg. 18 SHF

Summer Chick flicks with Richard Gere!!

I am sick of superheroes… which is why I have moved back towards watching film Noir!! The men, like Richard Gere’s characters, are paradoxical, graceful if not down right ugly/ beautiful. They walk between light and shadow and are motivated by hate/love! Real men not fake ones.

A depth in character that slaps the face of my unconscious. I like it that way.

My three favorite Richard Gere films are American Gigolo, Mothman Prophecies and Unfaithful.

It is not just his good looks or notorious backlash of gossip that follows the real man.

As a alumnae of Los Angeles Valley College, Gere projects what it is to be a man in our modern age; so ruthlessly and graciously. As the young buck ready to fuck, to the reporter caught up in a mystery of life, or to the man betrayed by his wife; he is a portrayal of the modern man.

Alonzo D. Emmweich: “Oh, there’s nothing so different about them. After all, crime is only… a left-handed form of human endeavor.” ~Asphalt Jungle

Random Pick day is Sunday ….on the 1st day of summer.

Another Sunday for shy and ruthless Miss. Mantis. In the cave of cool air after eating, cleaning, and exercising… a bit… time to reach out with that sharp stretch for something sparkling, insightful, and unknown… well here goes. Eyes closed, reach and open book to…

From Marianne Willamson, A Woman’s Worth is the book dustily chosen from the bookshelf.

Sneeze and wonder and so here is the quote,

“And when a woman remembers her glory, a man of goodwill can barely contain joy. His real self arises in the presence of her own. I’m telling you, it works, this thing, this looking within to attract what is without. Make room for love, and it always comes. Make a nest for love, and it always settles. Make a home for the beloved, and he [she] will find his {her} way there.”

~End of Chapter Embracing the Goddess PG. 75

Gloria Grahame American actress

Random Pick day is Sunday !

Here at the office of The Seminary Of Praying Mantis are many many books. Mantis does more than, with silence and insightful grace, sit on a flower or leaf. Often Mantis is found engaged in a book. As this is a seminary of sorts, and today is under the wonderful magic of a waxing gibbous moon; this day comes forth the ritual of random pick from a book day. Ordained by mantis and so forth etc… with a front leg, that is sharp with spines, grasps open a book… randomly of course !

Faust (Part One)

Mephistopheles says to Faust:

That’s very nice.

There’s only one thing I find wrong;

Time is short, art is long.

You could do with a little artistic advice.

Confederate with one of the poets

And let him flog his imagination

To heap all virtues on your head,

A head with such a reputation:

Lion’s bravery,

Stags’ velocity,

Fire of Italy,

Northern tenacity,

Let him find out the secret art

Of combining craft with a noble heart

And of being in love like a young man,

Hotly, but working to a plan.

Such a person-I’d like to meet him;

“Mr. Microcosm” is how I’d greet him.

Super mantis from Atlantis..

Noticing women

“(During a trial in which she was accused of indecency on stage) Judge: ‘Miss West, are you trying to show contempt for this court?’ Mae West: ‘On the contrary, your Honor, I was doin’ my best to conceal it.’ ”~ Mae West quotes

Noticing women my age and what they are doing as I am doing !

While waiting at a stop sign on Topanga Blvd. I saw a woman washing indoor windows! She sprayed solution and rubbed it down, a dark-haired woman with well-formed forearms and muscles extending to her shoulders! I thought,
” she is buff! I wonder how a woman her age, who works at a hot dog hamburger joint, was looking so healthy !”
Next while driving I saw a lady in black! She had long white-blond hair and stylized boots which buckled as she walked. She arranged her black leather purse as she pushed the button to walk!
Also on Platt St. I was making a right hand turn into a shopping center. I found myself waiting for a petit lady to walk by in her blue jogging/ walking suit! She jogged gracefully before my truck… joy in every step of youthful charm! We waved a’ hello” as she passed!

Older women doing their thing at 8:30 AM on a Thursday like any other day!!

It is an unusual feeling to be on an internally rewarding world of computer. So often we are continually remembered in our youthful days. For me it is the continuous projection of people who have died. Sid Vicious, Darby Crash, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. Music created by a time of their greatest genius; ages 17 to 27. The continuous story of their originality … now witnessed by the aged…those who have survived! That is ok for those that are dead. For me personally living in the now of doing, is my preferred place to be …thankyou!! I still listen to the whispers of the dead, and the ancient archetypes of the mystic, but it is nice to be happily here in my older womanly body !! I am working on the buff thing, yet my ‘ancient aliens genetically altered genes’ have given me, or projected through me, an Earth Mother of Lauseel (25,000 B.C.E. ) body shape.

A wish under Orion’s belt and the Pleiades…

You don’t have to read this, it is a little on the girly corny side… but I want to put some good vibes out there..

A Valentines day post..

The corporate woman has been defined as the ‘liberated woman’ and I see that as the exact opposite. I think she now is more enslaved, maybe even more than the housewife was; because she’s so out of her power, and imitating male power is not female power. ~ Kenny Loggins

Watercolor by Hudley

I get this unconscious pressure from society to be something. Guilt demons tell me I need to get out and have a real job. I don’t have the friends I use to because most of them are faces on Facebook. I experienced burn out at twenty-nine. Then again after getting my BA and then again, I fell flat on my face while trying to get my MA. All the while engaged as a domestic goddess; some call them housewife or domestic engineer! I find it the best place for me. Time and place in relationship to all the possibilities and here I am.

I am happy. I don’t think my creativity or smarts need to be exploited in the work force for money. This is the key to my success. I ordained it this way. You can too. I cook, clean, do the taxes…never do oldest son’s physics problems… only if he asks me quantum physics questions: the possibilities of synchronicity and photons in the universe and how this relates to our DNA. Ya I put all my love in a paper cup with one cocky boy years ago. He is a good one too. A real man now. It has not always been smooth sailing either.

We both have had our eyes wander… and we have sometimes tried too hard to make each other happy. Too many beers too! Confrontations of course. I still have goals of having a small publishing company, or going out into the world to read my poetry in front of real people. Maybe even showing my art in a small art gallery can still happen again? If the time and place is right and the wind is moving in the right direction…. that is the way I fly.

I hope that my children can find the love I have!! I wish this for everyone. Except all the chess books…my man’s books… I don’t wish those books on anyone, well…maybe my siblings in the South of France !!

Teaching Nature politics

At the museum — **Youngest son at the Museum**

Today I awoke with a lecture on my tongue. The kids are home on winter break. I am experiencing my normal winter blues. What came to mind was something a profession said to me years ago,

“Don’t take on someones else’s karma.”

He is a Jungian therapist and Buddhist priest. This is the basis of my lecture I gave to the kids today, including the cats. The normal stuff was happening in the house. Cats and fish were moving around in their environment, Oldest son is making breakfast. The sounds of sneezing attack the air. An open door to the outside garden brings in the sounds of a cold day. Even the squirrels perched on their branches outside are listening. They tease the cats. The light and the shadow moves the trees as the breeze tickles mysteriously by.

We are all light and shadow.

Imagine all of these qualities of life.

Apply them to everyone you know.

People cry. People smile.

We often have to stand up for what we think is right

alone.

We need to see the good things that are here.

Right now.

We all face love and death.

Pain and pleasure comes to visit often.

Most importantly I have learned,…

we need to step away and let others experience their own karma.

The kids are joking, musing, talking and listening… I think? My kids always to me…but to the world…are now young men.

Hate talking

Recently in an interview. I was asked many questions about days long gone by. I found that one question, yes one, I responded to in a round about way. I found myself floating above my brain.

Releasing words which were coming out of my mouth. I looked at the interviewer and he had an in-depth look on his face. Fucking stupid words were trying to describe feelings. wonderful, explosive feelings from my youth. The enthusiasm was bouncing around the walls shaking off the dusty dust from my older mind and body.

I was in the corner of words pouring out as vast sentences forming from images and feelings. All which came to a separate conclusion. Of a time that was not linear but moved around as a record on a turn table or as fast live songs that grabbed me and knocked me to the ground.

“Is he understanding my words…. geez…ask another question please??!!”

Thank God he did…I really hate talking. My last interview is my solution. !!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/

The Seminary Of Praying Mantis Publishing

A little Praying Mantis news…

The Mantis will sit in an attitude of extreme reverence and contemplation, his head turned sometimes slightly on side as if he were waiting…for the wind to come from far beyond the mountains on the other side of the desert to bring him a story of life before and beyond the moment.

~ Pg. 22. The Creative Pattern In Primitive Africa by Laurens van der Post

The Seminary of Praying Mantis Publishing, Funny & Real Advertisements….

Comrades who whisper from the dead. Tall Drinks!!

Holly ready to send her laser… by Shyane

Part one:

Reading a few introductory books before entering The Red Book by CG Jung is a wise thing for me to do. Current historians and psychologists with a depth psychology twist are a nice tall drink. Understanding that Jung had a hard time deciding, in his life, whether to publish the book or not makes me feel as if I am violating his soul in reading it at all….after his death too. Whispering in my ear my entire quasi adult life makes me feel differently about this.

Reading these pre books I am affirmed in my conclusion. That he wrote the book for others as well as for himself.

Jung even encouraged his patients and friends to make a Red Book of their own. Comrades who whisper from the dead. Alchemy personified…but why me, why know and why share? This is a personal insight form a lay person that just happens to have a soul like everyone else… even those with PHDs! As an artist, with insight, I can try to write!

This complements this journey before I enter his world…personal yes but collectively through our mutual histories; past, present and future dreams. I wonder if the computer and blogging were around, in Jung’s time, if he too would use it freely to creatively express himself. I think he would have loved to. How brave we have become in sharing who we are!!
Just as I know there is evil in the world I know there is also goodness.

I have witnesses both, experienced both and been both-and I will continue- yet one thing I have not altered is my innocence. Maybe this is the reason for suffering and sorrow. I think I need to blend a little of the two, evil and goodness, within my cauldron. Stirring it and truly becoming a real adult in the real world. Speaking symbols and watering my essence of insight. You can take it or leave it.

“The Sun its shadow complete the work.”
~ Michael Maier Atlanta Fugiens-279 Book Jungian Psychoanalysis.

When posting on Facebook or WordPress I find that the best responses received by others are the authentic ones I post. All the news, politics and other things just don’t get the same input. Ok maybe the punk rock stuff gives me an edged kick but I was very innocent and rebelliously aesthetic back in the 1980s!!

It is uncomfortable for me to share who I am now, yet when I post my mug, something I created, or some personal insight; I usually get a satisfactory response. Even if it is quick and intuitively posted?? I think we are all looking for authenticity in our lives. Communication!!

As Jim Morrison from the Doors said, “Something Sacred.”

When we see it in another we feel it, we know it. This is the best of human communications. Though it may be rough, vague and juicy… it is what we need. We may even crave it. Collectively and/or as an individual. The mind, heart and soul is part of this equation. It is art, magic and touches those hidden places in us.

It can fall into the formation of math and logic. As effervescent sparks of knowledge. It moves through pain and pleasure as emotional release. It jumps and dances with “look at me” and “I see you.” It is normal, natural but hidden sometimes within the shadow of our sun. We have to go looking for it. It is when we share our authentic self or our aesthetic self… we all respond to it.

Pre books: Lament of The Dead Psychology after Jung’s Red Book ~ James Hillman & Sonu Shamdasani,/ The Red Book Liber Novus A readers Edition CG Jung Edited with an Introduction by Sonu Shamdasani./ The Seven Sermons to the Dead.

“Life is too short…” I’ll find myself some wings!”

“However the psychology of the individual corresponded to the psychology of the nation, and only the transformation of the attitude of the individual could bring about cultural renewal” ~ Jung

Getting older makes time faster. Cars seem to race around the neighborhood faster. Red fire trucks, and alarms ringing, race faster. Around and around as I look at my youth trying to look outwards away, instead! To new things as centripetal force pulls me into the middle. Reflect, reflect and reflect painfully. Sucked into the layers of faces, words and feelings.

Wings extend out in moments of inspiration. Doing art is sharing; is support. I fly. I read that it is not until you show your art that it is complete. A finished piece of art has to be viewed.

No time for the past and youthful dreams. Now the future moves faster and inspiration to share parallels this reality. In my world, in my neighborhood, in my city, state, nation, and earth… the cosmos even!!

I fly with inspiration.

Yet contrary to this is the middle….Slow down perching as wings begin to fold inward. Time to view feelings and think quality of time with each heartbeat.

http://bluescribblings.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/daily-post-no-time-to-waste/

She’s not there.

If she laid her egg sack, which she most likely has, I have not seen her. Every year she comes and I paint her image, or take her picture. From the pool mesh fence I take her and let her crawl over my shoulders. This year only she indirectly shows herself. A floating exoskeleton on top of clear pool water, or images from friends. Her Praying Mantis tree with the beautiful purple anarchy flowers are as a waterfall and arbor waiting for her return.

She will be golden green, large and graceful now. She facing death. I wear her tattoo on my left wrist. The purple anarchy flower. Last night at a local club again she told me that I was at the right time and place. I was meant to be here, even though she was not. The leather jacket with silver studs addressed me.

The young man stood in front of me. There splashed upon his back, drawn and painted, is her anarchy flower. Holding up my wrist I knew it to be true. I tapped the young tall man on the shoulder and showed him the image. He acknowledged it and the music blew through and around us. The longitude and latitude the continuity of life. It was all meant to be, I was where I was meant to be…. but she was not there.

Oldest Son and book making.

Before saturation of words on the internet and before the underground resonance grew on making books the old-fashioned way… there was a silent breathing in.

Living in a tree house apartment in the heat of summer with the sound of a noisy air conditioner; created moments of summer that danced by too slowly. Since we were not in the best part of town my family did not visit. So, I produced fun projects to do with my oldest son (anywhere from 3 to 6 years old). We recycled most of the materials, cereal boxes, and cardboard.

All aspects of these books are handmade…only the paper and typing stray from this theme. I at one time had several of these books all around the place. Finally in the last year I brought them all together. All are here, finished books mixed with some at various stages of completion. Years ago, I gave one to my dad on his birthday. The small purplish one in the image above. The little book sat on parents’ hearth for years until his death and I now have it back.

Filling the pages with my watercolor paintings and typed poems, son and I had fun putting them together. We painted the covers with acrylic paint and mod podge, and correlated the inside papers, and stapled this all together.

The simple joys of life are ones that are creative, progressive and quaint.

During the heat of summer the sound of air conditioning muffled the nearby gang screams… but we created something special together. Two of the books have now come to rest on our hearth, my heart is there also.