Monday: La dama (The Lady)
Tuesday: La araña (The Spider)
Wednesday: La escalera (The Ladder)
Thursday: El diablito (The Little Devil)
Friday: El nopal (The Cactus)

art credits: photo by Michael Sanders

{Context: There's been a three-year drought in the southwest USA...}

"The old ones say that it has been over one hundred years since the rains have left us for so long," David replied. "That is why we have come to this place, to call to the rain."

{David prays, and arises.} ... "Already?" I asked, a little surprised. It seemed as though we had just arrived. "I thought you were going to pray for rain."

... "No, I said that I would 'pray rain'", he replied. "If I had prayed for rain, it would never happen."

{That afternoon it begins to rain--a lot.}

..."When I was young," he had said, "our elders passed to me the secret of prayer. The secret is that when we ask for something, we acknowledge what we do not have. Continuing to ask only gives power to what has never come to pass.

"The path between man and the forces of this world begins in our hearts. It is here that our feeling world is married to our thinking world. In my prayer, I begin with the feeling of gratitude for all that is and all that has come to pass. I gave thanks for the desert wind, the heat, and the drought, for that is the way of it, until now. It is not good. It is not bad. It has been our medicine.

"Then I chose a new medicine. I began to have the feeling of what rain feels like. I felt the feeling of rain upon my body. Standing in the stone circle, I imagined that I was in the plaza of our village, barefoot in the rain. I felt the feeling of wet earth oozing between my naked toes. I smelled the smell of rain on the straw-and-mud walls of our village after the storms. I felt what it feels like to walk through fields of corn growing up to my chest because the rains have been so plentiful. The old ones remind us that this is how we choose our path in this world. We must first have feelings of what we wish to experience. This is how we plant the seeds of a new way. From that point forward," David continued, "our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks."

"Thanks. Do you mean thanks for what we have created?" [, the author asks.]

"No, not for what we may have created," David replied. "Creation is already complete. Our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks for the opportunity to chose which creation we experience. Through our thanks we honor all possibilities and bring the ones we choose into this world." - from The Isaiah Effect, by Gregg Braden

art credits: Sonoita Rain, by Nancy Weaver Monsman

“You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'” - George Bernard Shaw

Loving, loving this attitude! Yes... this is precisely how I envision it. Very buoyed to find this unexpected gem in the local weekly (I'm in Las Vegas right now). Mind you, this is from the city that has the most foreclosures and the highest unemployment rate in the nation--at least, that's what they keep harping in the papers and saying in the news. And, they closed their only art museum due to funding. So this is a sweet surprise. And so in keeping with the spirit of whatever this "hub" we're building is about, Why Not?

We understand that for every high-spirited “Why not?” there is a swift and cruel answer these days: “Because we don’t have the money, that’s why not.” But that’s a conversation killer. And we’re not going to get much of anywhere by killing the conversation. How can we ever talk about plausible dreams for our city when it turns out that all dreams are implausible? Isn’t it worth it, just for a moment, to clear the cluttered actuarial tables and make room for a few wildly diverse proposals, ideas that at first glance seem far-fetched, but at second thought leave you wondering, “Why not?” Let’s set some thoughts loose to contend with one another, to compete and collide and start productive, creative arguments. - "Why Not? 21 arguably plausible, definitely outrageous ideas for our city, from downtown to the mountain," Seven, December 2, 2010

It really hit home this summer at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden that a typically grown tree can be constrained toward tiny, palm-sized proportions by making sure it's planted in a small pot. It's a method of cultivation called Bonsai.

I endeavor not to plant anyone into a tight flowerpot.

I wish everyone their uninhibited growth where roots wander wild and free and leafy canopies stretch with the sway of the galaxies.

I was in a gifted class when I was in 8th grade, and the teacher would pick eclectic topics not be covered in other coursework like Math or Civics. I only recall one topic that year, oh, there were others--they just don't stick in my mind. We studied death for over two weeks.

After the tsunami, I studied death for about a year and a half wholeheartedly. I left behind everything with a vow I made on the beach minutes after the tidal wave subsided. When I came back to California from Thailand, I broke up with the boyfriend, told my business partners I was done, and pretty much became a self-study monk. The quest: "What is deathless?"

Well, nobody can really tell you for you. And it doesn't have to take very long at all, as what is deathless is timeless.

credits: photo by James Jordan

with the f holes (Man Ray's famous photograph of Kiki of Montparnasee) 

It's cumbersome to bring a cello out to the French Quarter. Then to find a place to sit in the shadows of the oldest cathedral in USA. But, street art--public, accessible, live, immediate, non-precious, pay-as-you-wish--seems to be paradoxically old-fashioned and closer to way of the future, and so Hasan (who leans toward Conversatories if truth be told) hauls it out, and another friend runs up the stairs to the apartment we're told Tennessee Williams scribbled some or other writing to fetch him a chair. The night settles in.

You scout from shore. Pick the cleanest "line" to run. This route stays clear of all the obstacles--the rocks, the strainers, the keepers, the holes--you spot from shore. You get back in your canoe (or kayak) and it behooves one to focus on following your "line" wave by wave, moment by moment and improvising if things are slightly different in the water than they appeared from the bank. Yet, you never, ever lock your eyes on the obstacles you spotted on shore, for it you do you're headed into that vortex for certain.

Life is a lot like a river.

Monday: La chalupa (The Canoe)
Tuesday: El violoncello (The Cello)
Wednesday: La muerte (The Death)
Thursday: La maceta (The Flowerpot)
Friday: El Apache (The Apache, or The Native American)

There came a day she was done following rules, even her own. Wednesdays for roses!, and Sundays for daffodils! and Yesterday for wolves!--says who? Giving up on rigid rules and predictive patterns, this is how roses can sneak through your "plausibility" guard, and whisper to you in reverie. Otherwise, you're not supposed to talk to roses.

Sometimes miracles are wrapped in apples, sometimes miracles are in rose petals--it's all a matter of suspension of disbelief.