mermaids

I love mermaids. I didn’t know this until recently when I looked at the work I had done for my last exhibition and realised there were loads of mermaids. I have dreamed of being a mermaid. I am not sure why the fascination. They are from the sea, from the subconcious, from dreams, from magical possibility. They are emotion and from our deep-selves. My name comes from under the sea. There was a race of Tuatha de Danann living in the kingdom under the sea.

I think i just love the idea of them. I love the sea but it scares me too. Deep water, seaweed. Anyone else get a panic in their stomach while swimming over seaweed? Maybe its because they are at home under the sea, in a strange murkyness, belonging to the moon.

When the sirens sing you don’t feel seasick. Mermaids are the souls of sailors who loved the sea.

Maybe they come from the need for sailors to put a beautiful face on the sea. The sea was changeable and dangerous and uncharted and mermaids were its soul and reflected how the sailors felt about the sea. Dreams about women on the long lonely voyages out of sight and contact with land for days on end. No cell phones or fancy navigational aids on those days.

When you catch a mermaid you had better hold on tight, she is as slippery as a fish and will vanish from your grasp if you don’t keep her in your sight.

Mermaid, who does my dream self love?

I haven’t gotten over it yet. I have mermaids on my wall from mexico. They are still sitting in boxes in my new house in chihuahua so when I get there I will take some photos of them. I want to do some more. I have ideas! I even made a mermaid puppet I was really proud of, she turned out wonderful, until the house cat got a hold of her and chewed her head off.

Maybe she is my sea soul, my feminine side of my soul, my dream part. I will ask for a dream from her and see what she has to say to me. I would ask her to help me release my fear of deep water, to see the beauty and power of the sea and the hidden treasures waiting for me.

What would you ask her? x clio

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revelation #?????

had a major revelation recently about my art work.

I was constantly painting people into my pictures (and a picture had to have a person in it) because I didnt feel as if I was really in the situation I was painting. I was painting myself in the picture as reassurance, as telling myself the story over and over again who I was and who I could be.

Now this is ok, and I needed to do it, I needed to paint the possibility to show myself the way and give myself guidelines or encouragement, process whatever was going on in me at the time. But I realised suddenly a while ago I didnt need to do it anymore. That if I experience a moment fully as it happens I dont need to explain it to myself or tell myself I was there.

Thats the best I can explain it. Its a sense of freedom too, I am painting directly what is around me now instead of what could be or might be or what is inside my head.

Anyone else have any good freeing revelations about their artwork or even about themselves?

life, death and all the other stuff in between

Life

I went to Teotihuacan recently for a ceremony for the death of an old shaman woman named Sarita. Her son was there and his sons and wifes and all the people she had touched during her life whether directly, through the people she had taught and healed or indirectly like me who had never met her but felt it was important to be there.

The reason why this is in the life part is that death is not a dissapearing rather a passing onto somewhere else. The reason I went is not that I was sad she was dead but to honour her life here and the teaching that she passed onto others including me. She passed it onto her son (Miguel Ruiz, he wrote the ´Four aggreements’ you might have heard of the book) who passed it onto the teacher I work with who is passing it onto me. This teaching has been around since before the aztecs, way before that and went underground when the spanish arrived here in mexico. Each generation gets it, changes it slightly and then passes it onto the next one. The essence remains the same however. Knowledge of self, stalking the self, to be in your own centre and power with your own connection to the heart. It was great to be there.

Death

I had my principals tested the other night. I have been bemoaning that fact that we kill anything we see that is slightly dangerous to us. Spiders, scorpions, snakes, wolves, bears, tigers, rats, all get squished under the heel of the human fear of death.

The other night wandering around the house with a torch to see what I could see (counting the scorpions on the wall outside, the bumbling june bugs in their season of dying, the praying mantis waving back and forth doing its best to look like an innocent twig swaying in the wind) when in the corner of the kitchen shiny black, with the ever so familar bright red hour glass shape on its belly was the classic spider of all the spiders…. the black widow. I looked at it for ages and then thought “I suppose I should kill it” The idea of going back to bed with it still in the kitchen didn´t appeal to me. I was still looking at it when it ran back under the cupboard. I went and put on boots and got the broom, checked the corners and turned the cupboard over. Got a towel and squished it. I really didn´t want to but I suppose I discovered that a black widow spider outside is one thing but a black widow spider in my kitchen was another thing entirely. I thought of catching it but to tell the truth I was kind of nervous about it, my mind was telling me about death and bites and poisin and generally creating fear. 

Just checked on the net and apperently they are not very deadly, their venom (15 times stronger than a rattlesnake) produces severe muscle cramps (very painful) for about three days and hospitals generally prescribe morphine for the pain. The anitvenom actually kills more people than the venom. Old, sick, pregnant and children are most at risk of dying. Maybe the next time I won’t be so scared and catch it instead of killing it. One of the mine workers got bitten by a Violin Spider in Chihuahua and he is still in hospital with operations on his arm. I guess its easy to be idealistic about thiese things when you grow up in a country which has no dangerous anythings what so ever…. not even ants that bite!

all the other stuff in between

the dogs got their injections and the puppy shrieked and yowled for about ten minutes. Puppies are such babies. Went to the vet the next day and got pipettes to give it by the mouth, much better.

and now go outside look up at the sky and see past the blueness of the sky and think about the fact that we are on a spaceship of green and blue and things growing and dying but always changing, in the middle of nothing sailing round a huge ball of light and warmth. We get so lost in our little fears and desires. We don´t actually have to do anything except be here and live and learn how to be happy and let it all flow until its time to go, time to leave this place and go travelling again. Thats my hippy thought for the day… man

x clio

it’s time

There is a place just the other side of what we think is reality. It shimmers and shifts and none of our rules apply.

Did you ever think about the fact that solidity is an illusion? that an atom is mostly empty space and it is only the electrical forces which hold the atom together that give us the impression of ’solid’

So back to possibility. Consider all your preconceptions of the world as the electrical force giving the illusion of solidity where as it is actually 90% empty space and we create the rest.

Sometimes I look at the world and I realise there isn’t actually ‘anything’ there. It is energy I am putting form on and time on and my wants and needs on. Sit in a place of nature where there are no people or signs of human constructions and think about time. It becomes meaningless; plants grow and die, trees shed their leaves and grow new ones, flowers emerge spread their seeds and then wither, it is an endless circle of change. It will circle forever, life surging forward. Basic scientific rule we all learn in school… energy cannot be created or destroyed.

It is only when we step in and put ‘time’ on things that we get lost in needing to put structure on outside of ourselves. We have invested huge amounts of energy into time, we must do so much, we will die and it will all be over, must achieve, must make money, not enough time, too late, too young, too old, too early, to fast, too slow, too much, too little, hours, minutes, seconds, days, months, years, decades, ancient, antique, new, old, fresh, stale, time is money, three minute pasta, 30 second meals, fast food, life expectancy, growing old, yesterday, tomorrow, five minutes ago, in an hours time, three hours long… etc, etc

We are running in circles trying desperately to keep up with ourselves.  There is no time, not as we have constructed it. We are immortal beings and time is a circle or a river we flow along and the only thing to do is relax and go with the flow. Its great when I remember this. I get lost sometimes in the ‘too old’ thoughts, or ‘not getting enough done in the day’ thoughts and it makes me worried and anxious and impatient and I feel like I am pushing against a wall or walking in a dream when I can’t seem to walk fast enough. I think about the illusion of time and I let it go and I can be happy again in the moment.