Mony, Baby! 9 July 2008
Your Pixie is pleased to report that I strolled & sold my first Urban Pic, Mony Piece:
And here I am, aglow in its presence:
(Kamau Ware, 2008)
Thanks to the organizers of the Below 220th Exhibit and the Uptown Arts Stroll for making them a smashing success. Full of gratitude, I appreciate the support of my many Earth Angels who showed up when I needed them; I couldn’t have done it without each and every gift I got. As John Randolph Price puts it so very well,
“I know there is nothing that I could truly desire that is not at this very moment standing at the door of my consciousness, ready to appear in my life and affairs. I have only to be conscious of this Truth and every need is met, every problem solved, every question answered. My consciousness with God within is all I will ever need…”
And so it is!
Artistic Debut 27 June 2008
In preparation for Saturday & Sunday’s Uptown Arts Stroll, I sorted out an official artistic statement: 
Please head to the Heights this weekend to check out the scene “in this piece” (as Stevie Wonder would say). From the sneak peek I got last night, it’s getting hot up here!
My photo Mony Piece appears:
Saturday, 06/28/08
1:00-6:00pm
“Below 220″ Exhibit & Sale
6:00-8:00pm Reception
Original paintings, photos, prints, jewelry, fabric arts, crafts, all
by people living below 220th Street priced below $220.
The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, Pinehurst Ave. and W. 183rd St.
Info: 212-923-7800 x1226
& I’ll be showing more stuff on Saturday from 1:00-6:00 p.m. here:
Art in Bennett Park, Bennett Park, Ft. Washington Ave. at W. 183rd St.
Visual and performing arts. Featuring the band Spuyten Duyvil, performing at 3pm: alt folk, roots, traditional and acoustic music. Spuyten Duyvil is Mark Miller (bouzouki/8 string tenor guitar/ vocals); Beth Miller (vocals); Tom Socol (guitar/ dobro); Sarah Banks (fiddle); and Steve Horowitz (bass).
& last but not least, a few Urban Pix to entice you:
Happy Weekend & here’s to art in the heart of us all!
p.s. Thanks to Kamau for the cool shot & the advice I got when I needed it most. And to VRC, your engineering saved the day & I couldn’t have done it without you!
Walking This Way 25 June 2008
As I learn the hard way to walk the small steps, here’s my Divine Covenant that maps where I want to go: 
I’ve got to “make it work” in time for my art exhibit on Saturday so am channeling Tim Gunn tonight. Send me good photographic vibes, please, & here’s to getting better all the time.
I Am So Blessed 19 June 2008
Despite some early a.m. dental work, today turned out to be a big winner. Here’s why:
- Two Pixie-perfect pairs of summer shoes on clearance, Clarence, between the dentist’s office & mine. Oh how I heart NY!
- The talented, motivated & bright-shining peeps I work away the day with on W. 30th. They don’t make ‘em much better than that!
- The happy accidents I got when my dinner plans changed: The best chicken Tikka Masala I’ve had in ages & the company to go with it (see #2 above)
- The magic A train that came the second I reached the platform. You rock my world.
- The Jersey Boys soundtrack – today, yesterday & tomorrow. It never gets old to me!
So, dear reader, as they say at Fred Meyer, “What’s on your list today?”
My Chopra Center 17 June 2008
Urban Pix 16 June 2008
As part of the Uptown Arts Stroll, I’ll be showing some Pixie pics here. Hope you can make it to the Heights to see me. It’s worth the trip, I assure you. We won Tony Awards after all!
Saturday, 06/28/08
1:00-6:00 p.m.
“Below 220″Exhibit & Sale
6:00-8:00 p.m. Reception
Original paintings, photos, prints, jewelry, fabric arts, crafts, all by people living below 220th Street, priced below $220.
The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, Pinehurst Ave. and W. 183rd St.
Info: 212-923-7800 x1226.
Lots of love and light to you!
Is Obama An Enlightened Being? 8 June 2008
Thanks to moviebuddy for sending this one by Mark Morford. In his article, the SF Gate Columnist asks,”Is Obama an enlightened being? Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain’t no ordinary politician. You buying it?” I invite you to read for yourself and opine away:
“I find I’m having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and
more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and
miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of
all shapes and stripes and I’m having it in particular with those who seem
confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the
same thing: What the hell’s the big deal about Obama?
I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.
Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical,
a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former ’60s radical with no hope left,
or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak,
click away right now, because you ain’t gonna like this one little bit.
Ready? It goes likes this:
Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the
whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional
karmic antennae – or no antennae at all – to all those who just don’t
understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about
Obama’s aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the
pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of
people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new
channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?
No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring
rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black
president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different
ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless,
winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful
luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.
Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously
smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away
by Obama’s presence – not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence – to
say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully
orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into
office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking
lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.
Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not
coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a
Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead
us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but
who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of
relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.
These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and
peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or
emotion, but to the soul.
The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a
brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why
Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and
Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring
vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.
Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder,
why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national
identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family
is our version of royalty. But there’s something more. Those attuned to
energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK
wasn’t assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It’s because he
was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the
war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.
Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to
the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into
disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage
for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally
truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.
Let me be completely clear: I’m not arguing some sort of utopian
revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie
camp counselor. I’m not saying the man’s going to swoop in like a
superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds
sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.
Please. I’m also certainly not saying he’s perfect, that his presidency
will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of
politics-as-usual. While Obama’s certainly an entire universe away from
George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall
inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn’t hard to stand
far above and beyond the worst president in American history.
But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to
me, in a way, it’s not even about Obama, per se. There’s a vast amount of
positive energy swirling about that’s been held back by the armies of
BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod,
is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama’s candidacy. People and
emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn
to him. It’s exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational
energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know,
completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
Don’t buy any of it? Think that’s all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey
bulls– and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose
inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you’re
talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I
get it. I often believe it myself.
Not this time.”
Me either, Mark, me either!
Gia Knows Best 7 June 2008
After a rare, wild night on the New York town, I’m home this hot one nursing a hangover. The nausea that pizza and Coke kick back for a few hours at a time isn’t something I miss very much. Don’t get me wrong, I had a fabulous time of it, especially making moves to the Latin grooves at Son Cubano. The recovery, though, has given me a glimpse into some interesting emotions that only such a day can deliver.
I’ve had Angelina Jolie’s Gia on my list for a longtime; the Netflix gods knew I needed to see it today. Making progress with my own cancer memoir-to-be and what I want to say is not easy for me. Gia knew much when she wrote this:
“Life and death, energy and peace. If I stop today it was still worth it. Even the terrible mistakes that I made and would have unmade if I could. The pains that have burned me and scarred my soul, it was worth it, for having been allowed to walk where I’ve walked, which was to hell on earth, heaven on earth, back again, into, under, far in between, through it, in it, and above.”
I crawled back into bed at the end of the movie, grateful for where my story stops for now. I might feel like crap today but,
“This is life, not heaven. You don’t have to be perfect…” – Francesco
The Courage to Connect 4 June 2008
I’m not sure where to begin. As I consider the flashback, Mike’s words echo in my ear, “Can you just get me from point A to point B? Is that so hard?” This year’s Oscar noms were not his cup of tea.
I’ll start at the beginning, a very good place to start. In October, 2004, I participated in “Courage Night” at the Betsey Johnson store in Seattle. I was in my eighth month of treatment for breast cancer, receiving radiation at the time. For my part of the program, I read an excerpt from Geralyn Lucas’ book Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy ; And promised to pen one of my own.
I moved to New York in May of 2006. Shortly thereafter, I passed Betsey Johnson walking alone on the Upper Eastside. I said nothing to her. Later, I wondered where my courage was when I missed that moment.
On April 12th, 2008, I went to meet friends at the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Given my preference for train-free Saturdays, subway construction schedules and the size of the schlep, this was a big deal for me. I sported my favorite vintage coat for the occasion – black with big buttons – and wore a smile to match. Once en route, I got caught on the #2, circumnavigating the right stop. I could not seem to sort myself out.
Well into the second hour, lost and laughing about it, a woman across from me asked where I was going, or trying to go. Then she, Leslie, her man, Kamau, and his son escorted me straight to the museum. It just so happened they were headed there too. We exchanged stories, cards and compliments as we walked; I recall she mentioned my big buttons. Leslie and Kamau went inside to find their friends while I sat outside, awaiting mine.
I found them and we took in some art but the place was too packed. Exhausted, my friends and I planned our escape from the mad-house museum. As we debated what to do, there were Leslie and Kamau. He called a local restaurant to secure real estate for “Miss Pixie” and her pals. A little later, he texted me to make sure we found the place. I knew by the end of the night that these two were keepers.
We’ve emailed in the time since and have tried to reunite. All busy bees, it’s not been easy. But last week, something told me to ask Leslie and Kamau if they wanted to see Stevie Wonder in Atlantic City. Within a few hours, they replied that they were up for the adventure. The three of us arranged to meet this past Monday night for the Stevie pre-planning and some post-work fun. While we initially decided on a bar, Leslie asked, instead, if we could make it coffee. Kamau suggested Pret A Manger on 42nd to add to my Bryant Park idea.
Despite a few spills, we reconnected over coffee. Leslie and Kamau are the kind of couple I want to be around: incredibly artistic, they are open and excited about life and their dreams, both individual and collective. He’s a photographer, event producer and soon-to-be-big-time-blogger. She creatively consults, sews and just launched her own spring collection! What a crafty cookie, eh? And they like me. They really like me!
When the Pret A Manger crew burned something, we headed outside. We noticed a crowd forming as we crossed to Bryant Park. It was a gala of some sort. While Kamau stopped to snap shots, Leslie and I scanned the crowd. And there, emerging from a sea of pretty people, was Betsey Johnson herself. I told Kamau and Leslie how I’d seen her before but been too afraid to say something. At that moment, Kamau pushed my back gently in her direction. The rest they say, is herstory:
I told Betsey I was a survivor, too, and had done Courage Night at her store. She asked me how many years it had been for me. As I said, “4,” she said “10,” and flashed me the tattoo blazed across her left chest. “I hardly think about it anymore, honey,” she shared. “Me either,” I replied, “me either.” I asked Betsey for her autograph and we went our separate ways.
All a-twitter, Kamau, Leslie and I resumed our evening. We hatched our Atlantic City plan and came up with big ideas – for business and pleasure – in the green New York grass. Kamau shot more celebs and we peed at the Cellar inside the adjacent hotel. Twice.
It was a night of connection and courage, nudge needed and all. I’m grateful for the divine timing of my do-over with Betsey Johnson. But more than anything, I’m glad Leslie and Kamau were happy to help me that night in Brooklyn and become my friends. Something tells me we’ve only just begun…
