Julie Unplugged

Poison?

I will admit it is a strange obsession, but I have become hypnotized by the Moonflower. It's scent is simply other-wordly and its appearance opens my heart as much as any other plant or tree has opened my heart before and for someone like me, that says a lot.

A very learned-looking man told me this flower is poison. I have done research and yes, it can be poison, but it doesn't have to be poison. It is poison to the foolish, it is intensely engaging and beautiful to others.

I keep reaching for the metaphor in all of this. I know it is there, but I don't know if I am willing to go there yet.

So I stay closed, like the Moonflower in the daylight, that looks like this:

Kind of like a star.  It is beautiful in its own way, yet definitely closed.

In order for the moonflower to completely open, it has to bathe in darkness. I am not a big fan of the dark. It scares me. Still. Yet I can not walk by this flower without bowing to it, without putting my face close to its opened-by-the-dark heart.

I Wanted to Write

I wanted to write. I wanted to write. There, on the bliffs, sunshine still bright as it begins its habitual descent. 

My eyes hurt, their vision clearly spent, yet I still wanted to write.

In retrospect I know the aching in my eyes came from photographing the sun so avidly. I had forgotten the warnings from generations of mothers, “Don’t look directly into the sun!”

I somehow forgot in the passion of the lense that the warning words included when there is that small square of glass separating eyes from our precious morning star.

I noticed as I looked through the lense and saw the result that sometimes the beams are too bright and literally block out the view. We need a veil between us then, a way of seeing without so much light.  Sometimes we need to angle ourselves differently, adjust so that the light isn’t so oppressive and bossy.

I found that quite intriguing, the concept of “too much light.”

This walk was more of a stroll and consider than anything else.  It got me out of the house, allowed me the room to write, to think, to contemplate, to ask questions of myself and sit, quietly, to allow the responses to gently open the door a crack so that the beginnings of understanding could be touched and sniffed and cradled.

It was dry on my walk, overly bright and dry. The sun flirted with me. It winked at me from behind rooftops and tree limbs. What is this, nature, flirting with me? It has been happening regularly lately.

Familiar places took on a new hue that day.

I see a bicyclist and I want to grab his ipod and tug it free from his ears.  “Listen to the wind!” my heart commands.  He hums to the tune being played via his electronic device before straddling his bicycle and peddling away.

I opened the words of Shakespeare, rolled onto my back on a metal, grated bench, and looked at the darkening sky canopy above me. 

Book Reviews Galore

I am an Amazon reviewer - I love reviewing books.

I also review to challenge myself - and lately I have had my eye on the "Top 500 Reviewer" possibility. I am currently reviewer... oh, about 680... and the way to increase my ranking is to write reviews AND receive helpful votes from Amazon readership.

Here is my request.

Please read my reviews - and if you find them helpful, please mark HELPFUL.

Scroll down on my profile to wear it says REVIEWER RANK and SEE ALL REVIEWS -

Thank you so much!!

Best compliments......

Best compliments I received in the last few days:

From a woman at the Writers of Kern Meeting as she looked at me with a very open, clear expression on her face:

"I wish you were on the board when I was on the board."

Kayleen and I sat in Woody's, reading Rumi together quietly,
heads close, deeply in a space of pleasure. I heard Simone's
voice, "Look at those two beautiful ladies over there."

I glanced over and said, breathy-voiced, "We are reading
poetry."

Clinton looked over then and said, sort of confused, "Hey,
is that my Mom?" Pause. "Yes, it IS my mom."

I like bringing about confusion in young men.

From a woman I met doing a show for the Arts Council in a message
and a friends request on Myspace:

"Woman, you have a way with words."

Shiver me timbers and open up my heart. Arrrrrrrr!

Life will not denied

Life will not be denied.

I smelled the paradoxical scent of burned tree flesh and new life, intermingled under my fingertips.

Tears filled my eyes.

Beauty. Sadness. Death. Sacrifice. Rebirth.

laughter...

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can: all of them can make me laugh.
W. H. Auden

Such a flirt!

I stood behind a fence, the wide blue slats giving me space to point my camera and shoot the crape myrtle without interference.

It was the exact moment after my camera clicked that the wind blew and it felt as if the crape myrtle kissed me with its scent. I looked down at my feet and possibly even blushed.

A crape myrtle tree, flirting with me.

I have noticed this phenomenon since I have encountered the world with my camera and nearly everything has become a subject for my photographic art.

Something shifts when it is seen as a subject, when it is held sacredly - with a light yet sure and true touch. One of the joys of digital photography is that I can just click and click and click, allowing the camera to partner with my energy.

I don't have to worry that everything is "just right" I simply catch whatever is lobbed at me visually. It is like Paul Gaugin said, "I shut my eyes in order to see."

Last night I photographed my friend, Aileen Robinson, a fellow actor from "Song for Vanya" and she said something like this: "You really use interesting angles in your photography."

I looked down at the photos I had just taken of her and realized she was right. I hadn't noticed what made the photos so intriguing, I just clicked what drew my heart closer to the subject.

Maybe that is why the crape myrtle flirted with me.

Haiku, Anyone?

The other night at Refresh Rhyme Scheme's Poetry Night at Sandrini's I was talking to my friend, Coryn McBride, about writing practices, artistic practices and the like.

One of my favorite ways to "warm up" or practice is to use the sacred art form of haiku. I am not a haiku traditionalist, although I have studied the art to a certain extent... I just love the freedom of expression within its seventeen syllable container.

I have been having such fun with my new camera, snapping shots of everything everywhere that I kind of put two-and-two together and thought, "What if we wrote a haiku a day?" and then "Well, sometimes people get stuck in not knowing what to write about... so, what then?"

So I thought, "witness the moment in a photo..." so here I am, with a photo and a haiku I just breathed in and out... and an invitation to try it out for yourself.

Simply look at the photo and then write a three line haiku - the first line is five syllables, the second is seven syllables and the third line is five syllables... seventeen syllables... or about the length of an inhale and an exhale.

Ready to write? I'll post the photo inspiration:

Reflections open
The heart of humanity
You feel what I feel

Kern River Rat Dom

"You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it."

Paulo Coelho

I am deeply in love with the Kern River, the Mighty Kern north of town which is diverted into a trickle by the time it arrives in the center of Bakersfield. The river bed in Bakersfield proper is dry, and has a sacred feel even while waterless. Part of my job is to get out of the river - and write about what its gift back to me and the world is to be, is to become. I have turned my children into River Rats. I phoned Coryn last week from out there, where my children and I were wading in the cool waters and the gold flecks winked back from our feet. "My kids and I are being River Rats!"

It is so hard to come back to "society" when one has been submerged in RiverRatDom

We manage, but it isn't easy.

My Poetry Seeks New Audiences...Now!

Apparently I need to find a new audience for my poetry.

I enjoy stuffed pigs as much as the next person.

My mother used to collect stuffed pigs, afterall.

She might still have a few hanging around her Flagstaff home.

Remind me to ask her.

I can't depend on pigs forever.

Besides, they can be difficult to program.