HIGHWAY 40 REFLECTIONS, OR DRIFTING WITH THE TUMBLEWEEDS

 Coming back to New Mexico on I-40 the events and impressions of the previous week begin tumbling out of my disorganized and somewhat crowded mental storage locker, as if I’d just lifted the door to that dreaded and familiar scene of boxes, dust and cobwebs. I’ve been working up the courage to sort through to those hard to reach boxes toward the back. While in Cottonwood, I was too tired to think.  A minor bug perhaps, the ever present chemtrails, a dimensional shift maybe, but I was a bit under the weather on this visit. PQ was content just to be In Arizona, breath richer oxygen, enjoy the company of friends and watch lizards and birds from the porch with coffee and without worries.

We did accomplish our intended goal for the trip, checking out owner/chef Vlad Costa’s new location for 15.Quince in Cottonwood. It was quite a surprise.  It isn’t just bigger than the quaint Victorian cubby hole in Jerome, it’s on an entirely different scale with an enormously different environment.  The new place is huge, southwest style modern and able to seat probably four times as many. Of course, it has a lot more wall space for art.   

 

I’ve been reading Rupert Sheldrake’s new book, Science Set Free.  After a long spell of not reading, just letting my own process sort itself out, I’ve been hitting the books again. I believe this is part of the medicine path I’m on. Something new is emerging and I need to sharpen my tools. I read the way I cook or mix paint, a lot of intuitive blending and flavoring. I can tell when the mix is just right. Not scientific?  Of course not, science hasn’t arrived at that innate organizing of the creative process.

Yesterday, on the way up Oak Creek Canyon I was thinking about Sheldrake’s ideas and the outrage they evoke in the traditional scientific community. Perhaps Sheldrake’s concept of morphic resonance will require honing and reworking into the future, but from my intuitive, unscientific mind his ideas appeal to me because a similar concept came to me and others without any awareness of Sheldrake and I don’t think this is about being psychic. The popular saying of “it’s time has come” seems to automatically apply to major conceptual changes. Perhaps Sheldrake tuned into a need to find a new intention of knowledge.  The conventional science operates with a masculine thinking process of breaking down and analyzing the materials a thing or creature is made of, rather than what it is as a whole and certainly, not how it functions within a cosmic level of wholeness. Sheldrake, in this case, would be an advanced guard representing another mind and another perspective beginning to emerge into the consciousness of humans. This may be more important than whether or not he is theoretically correct.

Scientists and others who live in the world of intellect seem to fall into two primary types. There are those who adhere to and defend the current cache of knowledge like orthodox theologians and those that step beyond the boundaries of the prevailing paradigms with their accompanying doctrine. I’ve come to see this as a temperamental difference.  They are both necessary and yet predictably butt heads with each other.  This world seems to operate on the friction generated by opposing processes.  However, the concepts defended rigorously by the orthodox, were once considered heretical and frequently got their discoverers and supporters killed.  Somehow, the orthodox have never learned that making martyrs out of advocates of new concepts only empowers their ideas. However, this it isn’t about failure to rid the world of heretics as much as it is about the impossibility of stopping an idea whose time has come.  Scientists are the current priestly class and Scientific Materialism is the orthodox belief system. Simply notice how often science is used to authorize almost everything and it becomes apparent that orthodox science is the religion of our time. The mechanistic model seems strangely backwards. Since humans are the creators of machines, machines would have to resemble us not the other way around.

As we start down I-40, I’m seeing this landscape in a different way, how strange, and even embarrassing as I notice that my memory of this stretch of road is wrong or at least distorted. Next, Joseph City’s smokestacks are approaching. When coming from the east, I look forward to this landmark, as the first place from which it’s possible to see the San Francisco peaks behind Flagstaff.  However, I thought it was west of Winslow and now I realize it is actually between Winslow and Holbrook. Here and there, I feel that I’ve never seen this landscape before.  However, I’m enjoying the sensation of looking through different lenses.  I wonder which impression is closest to the truth and then it occurs to me that they are both true but incomplete. I’ve been seeing by habit and now the habits are breaking into fractal extensions or perhaps I’m just more aware of it.

When we pull off for gas in Gallup, PQ pulled up on the wrong side of the pump.  I had to remind him that our car fills on the right. How could he forget this? Then he dropped the keys on the floor, behavior more typical of me than him. This state of mind is either contagious or there is something in the air altering our perceptions and coordination.  Are the chemtrails getting to us, or maybe its sunspots or a consciousness shift to an awareness that is still unfamiliar? 

Next, I begin thinking about some of the people I know who are open to alternative medicine, science and spirituality.  These are not eccentrics or hippy types, not that it would be a bad thing if they were, but actually these people are well educated, highly functional and formerly from a middle class conservative socially responsible background.  They are not stereotypical woo-woo types, and they are middle age or older, well beyond adolescent rebellion.  Why are they looking beyond scientific materialism? There must be something unsatisfying in the current orthodox dogma.

As we drive on, we pass the fourth 18-wheeler within 150 miles, stopped by the side of the road with its hood up and a mechanic or tow truck attending. It is unusual to see even one.  Perhaps synchronicity has a theme. What is breaking down?  As we drive on, I notice another twisted retread on the road.  This one didn’t die easy. I wonder why retreads are legal. On one of our trips, one broke from a rear tire of a big rig right in front of us.  It almost caused a wreck. Moving down the highway at eighty miles an hour, they can cause a lot of damage when they break loose but still they are legal. Highway rules sometimes seem arbitrary.  

The mind conditioning runs deep.  No matter how often I experience synchronistic events, I still doubt my perceptions.  PQ reminds me now and then about my flat response to events that seem impossibly endowed with magic.  Our meeting was one of those events. When it’s happening it seems perfectly normal. Our minds dulled by reductionist teachings, we look through a dirty window.  When we see our surroundings with sharp clarity and joy, the priests tell us we are deluded by chemicals.

Our Goddess of Flaming Love

 An image of the Goddess of the New World came to me as we were moving back to Taos three years ago. Last week I decided to overcome my reluctance to paint in the kitchen. I found that she had a life of her own and I felt very inadequate to bring her in with paint on canvas. It seemed like an arrogant sacrilege but she wanted to come out, so I did the best I could. She is made of fractal energy flaming life visible and invisible into the space all around her. She is made of original power.   I will use her power as inspiration to lead me into the future. 

Back in Taos, hundreds of Harley’s are buzzing around town like giant flies. The Memorial Day weekend is the kickoff of the summer season and this is how it begins.  The weather is good except for being windy and dry, but otherwise open door weather. PQ is still recuperating from reentry but we are well and looking forward to whatever is around the corner. Our visit to Cottonwood was like old home week, but two among our Arizona family are moving out of the area. We were glad to be there before they left and we all had a barbeque for the sake of tradition. Nothing lasts forever, and spring is a time of new growth. We look forward to the next chapter of our story. Creation keeps happening.

 

THE PREGNANT UNKNOWN OR; There is a certain thrill about losing control

When my cousin Ruthy and I were children we used to ride double on her mare, Nelly  to a favorite open area. We would take her bridal off and then take turns riding  at full gallop across an expanse to the edge of a big ditch and then back using only leg signals. We had accidentally discovered that at some time in a past unknown to us she had been trained to stop when a rider began to dismount. We  rode bareback and that made it even more thrilling.  We trusted her but then there was always the possibility that she would get carried away in the moment and ignore our signals. It didn't happen, but it could have.  Isn't that the way life works most of the time?

I have not written much lately. PQ and I have been busy preparing for a new art showing at 15.Quince, a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Jerome Arizona. However, life is moving into the turbulence of spring, and today owner/chef Vlad Costa informed us that the restaurant is moving to a new building in Cottonwood on the first of May.  Here we were trying to get everything together for a show May fourth and now the date of the show has up-ended.   But how curious! I like the idea of having 15. Quince in Cottonwood, and how unexpected it is. Actually, our life has been moving unpredictably in other ways as well. It is the essence of spring for events to be up-in-the-air like the tumbleweeds blown from who knows where and stopped in their flight only by our back fence. 

 Here is a slide show featuring a number of PQ's new work with his song "Among the Stars" as background.

My feline friends have been an interesting lesson.  A few mornings ago, I opened the door to see who was coming to breakfast and the yellow cat, white cat and little feral black cat were there but so was a large long haired yellow tabby with exactly the same face as the adolescent yellow.  I’ve never seen this cat before and she hasn’t been back since. However, what followed left me wondering just how these animals communicated.  The new adult yellow cat acted as if she knew all about this morning ritual. There was nothing shy or surprised in her behavior.  But, the really interesting part was the way her presence influenced the others. The little black cat that never allowed me very near, and ran off if I looked at her directly, suddenly was at ease and friendly.  I reached down and stroked her back and she arched it rubbing against my leg like a house cat. This was very strange. The other cats were also at ease with each other. The black cat has continued to be far more trusting and friendly. It seemed that the older yellow cat had communicated trust to the others and gave them the belief that we were all family and then went back to wherever she came from. She was wearing a silver collar, so she is somebody’s treasured pet. But she seemed to be a feline Dr. Phil.

The more I watch animals the more I realize that we seriously underestimate them.  The Starlings that live in our bathroom vent have a very complex language that includes wing flapping and shaking as well as an incredible verbal repertoire.  These creatures may not have a language of words but they certainly communicate some complex messages among themselves and even with us if we pay attention.  We humans are very homo centric. Humans may have to face this prejudice soon.

We have taken the drop cloth out of the dining area and enjoyed a few days of living in the whole house. But, I’ve changed during the past three weeks.  I actually miss the clutter of brushes, paint and dropcloth in the middle of the house, while PQ works intensely with flying colors (literally). In fact, something is definitely shifting in my mind and heart.  I’m letting go of the fear of driving off the road into the unknown without any foreseeable income.  Much to my surprise I'm feeling a new  calm expectancy about what may be at the bottom of the drop.

PQ's health has been challenged by  unusually large amounts of allergens in the air. We still hope to someday live in Cottonwood again but are flowing with the spring wind right now.  Like the tumbleweeds we don't know just what fence will stop us.  Sometimes at night after the lights go out I think we are doomed to run out of resources and luck and all the possible awful outcomes attack me in the dark. PQ is not inclined to these attacks.  I once read that the sign of Cancer needs a binge of dreadful possibilities now and then.  After we explore the worst, we have that covered and can proceed with life. Cancer isn't my sun sign, that is Gemini. But with Cancer rising and Moon conjunct Jupiter in Cancer it starts everything I do. After I go through the dark night confrontation with doom, my upbeat Gemini self arises ready to go shopping and out to lunch since I don't have to come up with the mortgage until the end of the month.

FORWARD INTO SPRING

Nature is gathering the energy to emerge through the thick skin of Mother Earth.  There are brave little green shoots popping up here and there.  I had one balmy sunny day for cleaning the yard last week, but ever since it’s been too windy to finish the job. I haven’t yet watered any of the plants in hope that they will put their roots down deeper because another dry summer is predicted by the weather people and they are going to have to be tough and resourceful. Perhaps next week I can give them a singular drink and finish the cleanup. We had coffee outside this morning, the first time in a week. The starlings who live in our bathroom vent are singing their spring song after a quiet but comfortable winter in a warm apartment. The feral black kitty with the tip cropped off one ear is getting more trusting. She is starting to play with the yellow tabby and even challenge the local fat cat who eyes her food.  The white kitten shows up now and then but it’s just a social visit since he is now well fed and obviously pampered by his adopted mom. Our own dimmed life force is slowly emerging from its winter glum at about the same pace as the plants.  PQ has been painting every day and I’m actually getting used to having the dining room as his studio.

Restaurant owner, Vlad Costa and Miles

Watching PQ paint is stirring the desire to paint again from the bottom of my mental cellar. It’s going to take a while to bring all the painting fragments in my head together again, but I’m encouraged by my tolerance for not having a table to eat on for the past month. However, I found a cheap Art Cart online with wheels and three shelves. It should arrive next week. This is a sign of my acceptance that the dining room is now going to double as studio space. At least we will have our table back. PQ says that our town house has wonderful creative power because it is our combined energy.  I must say that I’ve never seen him work with such enthusiasm and focused discipline. PQ’s new work really does have a special depth and light. His upcoming show at 15. Quince in Jerome, Arizona is an event we are keenly looking forward to.  This venue is a wonderful gourmet quality New Mexican Style restaurant owned by Chef Vladimir Costa.  

I misplaced the note with the date on it after we came back from Cottonwood in February, but I thought it was May 5^th. I figured I would call Vlad for the exact date later this month.  Then our friends Miles and Gail went to Arizona on business and ended up in Jerome looking for Pizza. It just happens that Vlad Costa recently opened a pizza café in addition to his Mexican restaurant and they discovered it.  After talking to him, they discovered that he was the restaurant owner who had invited their friend Standing Deer to have an art show at 15. Quince. Miles called PQ to tell him the actual date was May 5. The old psychic channels are still working in the age of electronics.

Here is the Flyer:

ART SHOW OPENING ON MAY 4, 2013 IN JEROME ARIZONA

AT RESTAURANT 15.QUINCE FEATURING

TAOS PUEBLO ARTIST BLUE SPRUCE STANDING DEER

(Pba-Quen-Nee-e)

 Blue Spruce Standing Deer (Pba-Quen-Nee-e) is a Tiwa Indian artist and Musician, born and raised at Taos Pueblo in Northern New Mexico. He is the son of a traditional Medicine Man.  Through his paintings and music, he seeks to express the living essence of his Tiwa people. Although this tradition is ancient, Standing Deer brings it headlong into the modern world with his unique personal style.

He frequently receives the images for his paintings from the Spirit World as he sings and drums. These spirit messages arrive on the songs and transmute into symbolic metaphors rendered in a vibrant rainbow of colors that Standing Deer converts into stunning images with acrylic paint on canvas.

Standing Deer has traveled extensively in Europe and the United States, and has been the only Native American invited to lead spiritual ceremony and drumming within the ancient Neolithic stone circle of Stonehenge, in England. In recent years, he has performed at the Creative Life Center in Sedona Arizona.  He also performs Land and House Blessings and Wedding Ceremonies. Presently he divides his time between Taos, New Mexico and Cottonwood Arizona.

Standing Deer's deep immersion in his traditional culture, where music, art and spirituality are never separate from everyday life, but the normal expression of joy, reverence and gratitude to the Creative Source of all that is, lends a profound love of life to his art, workshops, and ceremonies.

If any of you can make it we should have a good time.  I won’t share any of the new paintings until after the show, but I think they are the best he has done in a long time, maybe ever.