age

I looked in the mirror yesterday and what did I see? I saw lines!! On my face and on my neck. Eek! Age check. I guess I was indulging the well known phenomenon called ‘the arrogance of youth’ without even knowing it. It will never happen to me, I think smugly, I am not going to get old, and then even if the remote possibility arrives that I look a bit old I will never do those silly things women do to keep age at bay like expensive creams and plastic surgery.

Now its safe bet that I will never get plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons but I actually found myself wondering about a cream I saw on telly. Does it really work I wondered before I saw sense and laughed at myself for even going there. The thing is though in society women are supposed to stay young. Look at the pressure on Hollywood actresses once they pass thirty and enter into that indefinable space known as ‘old’ and then look at aging male actors still getting parts wooing 25 year olds and we are supposed to believe it? I had a problem with Woody Allen after a while as he got smaller and more wrinkly and more grandfather like and he was still writing parts for himself which involved young women falling in love with him and I saw the old Sabrina a few days ago where a very middle-aged Humphrey Bogart falls in love and is fallen in love by a barely past her teens Audrey Hepburn. I enjoyed the film, the old sets, the acting, the story but I just didn’t believe the love paring.

I guess it annoys me because I still invest in it personally. Because I am a woman and I don’t want to get forgotten or passed over when I am old. I judge women who get plastic surgery to stay young looking but there is a part of me that understands it also. It’s a battle that we have constructed for ourselves. In the search for eternal physical youth we maintain the myth and the struggle, we buy into the myth and if we still buy into it and uphold it when are the men going to reject it? We have to reject it first.

There are plenty of women who have rejected it and I admire them and I hope I can too. I am sure as I get older I will have all the fears of growing old and facing death and losing time and so I guess I can just deal with them as they arrive. No point in worrying about who I am going to be when I am 50. I can’t compare with any other 50 year olds I know because I don’t know who I will be when I am fifty. Right know I can deal with looking a little bit older than I did last year.

Zopilotes

Zopilotes is spanish for Vulture and these guys are turkey vultures who live in the mountains of chihuahua. I was getting the train back from Chihuahua city (awesome train ride, goes through what is called the Barrancas del Cobre. In parts deeper and wider than the grand canyon in america) and just got a glimpse as we passed of all these vultures dining on a (very) dead cow. The image stuck with me and became this painting.
These birds are incredibly common here. You can see six or seven of them at a time hovering in a circle over some distant valley. I wonder do they have a special ’somethings going to die’ sense.

and check out my sisters new blog/online portfolio Grainne Quinlan. She is currently looking for a job in an animation studio so if anyone has any ideas. She worked on El Tigre, a super cool cartoon set in Mexico city. In one episode they are being attacked by evil guacamole and the arch villaness is an electric guitar playing skeleton called Katana

Also while I am at it the company here in mexico is looking for an Autocad drawer (must be good, with experience) to draw the ramps and drifts under the ground. Pay is good and no expenses! Anyone know anyone?

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

death and rebirth

born from the old the new comes flying forth, a rabbit leaps upwards in green growing plants, seeds yet to be germinated wait for their time to take nutrients from the earth and burst forth into life.

x spring time!

Hades

Hades was the king of the underworld and he stole Persephone down to his underground kingdom and tricked her into eating six pomegranate seed which meant that she would have to stay for six months underground and could return to the surface for six months. This is where winter and summer comes from. When Persephone goes underground her mother, who is the earth mother, Demeter, mourns for her lost child.

So says the myth

but… greek myths are not just myths but maps of the human pysche. I become fasinated by various ones at different times. This one, I began thinking about Persephone, queen of the underworld for six months. Does she fall in love with Hades who really loves her? does she gain some of his power? In an earlier myth she was actually the queen of death and life but as the world grew more patriarchal the myths changed and the women grew less and became secondary to the men. So she survives as an abductee without power, forced to be with Hades for six months.

I think she learns and accepts her fate, takes half of the power down below and shares the throne with Hades.

Demeter can’t accept this, her beloved daughter has grown up and has taken a position opposite hers, Demeter is life, Persephone is death. She mourns for innocent times past when there was no knowledge of death and decay and change. But there can be no life with change.

Hades, in a secret part of himself worships Persephone and can’t believe he has managed to trap this angel of light to himself. He is lost when she is gone for the six months and waits for her to come home, maybe afraid she will break the agreement and never return.

She is two.. life and death, winter and summer, free and bound, the light and winds and the underground darkness.

The first picture is Persephone looking to the light as she prepares to leave for the six months, not looking back, happy to be going up to the green and the sun. Hades looks at her leaving, he can’t follow, he is bound to the underworld.

The second picture is hades lost without her. The sad king, he has a whole kingdom and it is not enough.

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letting go

So… it is time to get the new years resolution into action! I decided this year I would try and clear as much of my past as I could. Release old ways of thinking and behaviours that don’t work any more, finish projects or definitely say good bye to projects that aren’t working. Use up the big pile of fabrics I have on the floor of my work room before I can buy new fabrics. I get more inventive when I have to improvise.

I did this once before, about four years ago when I was coming to mexico for the first time. I reckon, looking back, I was about 95% ruthless. I burnt old diaries and sketches and stories and writings that I had been hanging onto since secondary school. I went through my clothes and books and jewelry and gave away anything that I never wore or rarely wore or just some items I knew a friend would really like. It was really hard to do but I felt so light after it was all gone.

Clearing the past is not forgetting people or places or times but rather clearing any old negativity or limitation round the memory and remembering with love and acceptance. It also clears any energy blocks that are preventing me from going forward or achieving my goals.

I bought paper this morning to get started on the illustrations for the crow story and I have three nearly done embroideries waiting for borders and a skirt hanging waiting for a hem. All the new stuff can wait for a week or so while I get everything sorted.