PoeTree of Life

lightning struck

ladyapples — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:19:37 GMT

it sometimes is an ocean night like this cracking the sky open with its electric unavoidability. sometimes it goes like this the yawn before the moan the creak before the groan my mind is empty of evidence my heart filled to bursting with the ditritus of a thousand unlived love affairs what else is there but this in a moment such as this or that or another i can not give anymore of myself until the crows come to pick my bones as i live and breath this feast of breath does fill and empty me eternally i drive forward through the night on a vehicle of salt and fumes the darkness cloaks my naked form and i disappear into the landscape of my own dreaming only to reappear unrecognizable. am i such a known entity? what is it that thrills me eternally? novelty. that blessed curse that keeps the world spinning on its axis and will not let me stop moving even for a moment, i catch my breath in between gasps of unfamiliar air, chasing after my own ether. either this or that. where does inspiration come from and to where does it return? i walk in a daze through the days of my life catching glimpses of brilliance between cracking open and sealing the seams with dust and petals and brine. i am nothing without a muse. unfocused, unmotivated. the desire to create desire. the desire to transcend desire. the drive to move beyond such human cycles. releasing desire in the name of true pleasure. perhaps. how undeniable subtlety can be and how subtle, undeniability... how immediately the moment goes molten and only salt remains... The noun of the self becomes a verb eternally in fluid flux yet solid in its flow.

for Pema, in labor

ladyapples — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:48:52 GMT

this is the time when your breath becomes the weather pattern of a hidden world when the strength of your back of your spine of your purest imagination truly discovers its own power to create a life as your own heartbeat divides in two and recreates itself to be brought fresh into this world i am with you my breath is yours through every dimension my spine's own strength i give to you in humblest gratitude for your willingness to birth our teacher to cultivate the seedling sprouts of a new day you are pushing now from halfway around the world i can feel the force of your will and of the larger will that surrounds it as the ocean surrounds the mermaid's fallen tears of joy when she discovers her first pearl we are with you this wild family of ragamuffin lightkeepers our candles are lit in the shrines of remembrance in this moment all death is renewed and fertilizes the seeds of life using invisible antlers to hold up the burning coals burning cedar, sweetgrass, tobacco, copal the smoke of my prayers surrounds you in grace you are the earth's own power you are an instrument for the song of life to sing through your radiance blinds each of us into a deeper seeing half way around the world i feel you pushing i am with you you are surrounded by a circle of candles tied with red string you are embraced by the blessings of all our ancestors and all the ancestors yet to be i am breathing with you pushing with you we are with you

ashes and seeds --written 2/25 ubud, bali

ladyapples — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:35:23 GMT

I am born with the light into a world i can not remember dreaming. I rise with the day inside an unfamiliar song. I am inside a body, inside a family, inside a world. I ask for nothing, yet receive so much, my palms overflowing with salt and flowers, ash and fruit. An electric buzz of insects rises steep from the density of green that surrounds me and just as quickly fades away. I am still here. Shadows play upon leaf tops, beloveds intertwine beneath, the river charges towards and away, life is so undeniably real. I would dissolve into an offering of smoke and song if it didn't seem so true that I am more of use in solid form, dissolving hard knots of human story into another sort of offering. I am still here. Even as Death catches me from behind and sweeps me across a grand dancefloor of cracked bones and burnt hair, even as i stare into the empty sockets of everyone's final lover, even as a red river runs in rivulets over my skin--that skin is warm, and holds a quickening within it. I am still here. Even as the solid forms of a known world dissolve in the flames of the funeral pyre, somehow I am still here. And so are you, beloved opal keeper, feather finder, nectar seeker. You are all around me even as you are gone you are not gone. Even as I feel myself dissolving I am still here. I hold a rose quartz skull in my right hand and a golden serpent in my left. The ochre of a homeland I do not posses spirals across my palms. The fire is being built, the songs are being sung, somewhere in the world there is a blade stained with innocent blood. Somewhere in the world are the hands that wield it. Each pair of hands holds different work--mining the opals, sifting the bones, painting the ochre, ringing the bell, fanning the flame but the hands that wield the knife--how is that work given? How is that work placed sacred into a human vessel to wreak its havoc upon our world? It is not for understanding. Bring me those hands and I swear I will wash the blood from them. I will offer myself to the resolution of this pain. If such a thing can be called into the world, I will raise my voice in supple power to create a song of truth triumphant and justice compassionate. I will drink the salty labor of forgiveness until the water runs clear. And if those hands never come to me for washing, somehow I will remain. Somehow each day will still rise through me into dreaming.

immortal beloved...

ladyapples — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:24:28 GMT

Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there. I did not die. by Mary Elizabeth Frye

alive inside these love affairs

ladyapples — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:45:13 GMT

Once again waking into a day overflowing with water, a day filled to bursting with rhythm and sound. Something in the world must need this, something larger than the human story something with a capability to contain vastness. Into this vastness I place my small offerings of words and seeds and efforts of attention in some awkward attempt to shape that vastness into another day of breath and joy. The space folds in around my offerings and somehow another day emerges from its shaping as it coalesces into rain and dirt and the song they sing each time they kiss. They are the oldest lovers, the rain and the dirt. Surpassed only by the ocean and the moon. These ancient love affairs we live inside of they hold secrets for our own. When you are the ocean when the true depth of your vastness reflects your lover's shining brilliance, an illuminated pathway is formed from the borderland of our world into the limitless potential of the horizon. When you are the dirt when you can absorb the incessant rhythms of your lover's true patterns of being into your own body and use the resulting fertility to feed your own, then the world is continually born anew through your love. then your love itself is a worthy offering. what else would you have it be? And what if you are the moon and all you know to do it reflect the light of one distant source onto another? Then you allow the innate cycles of your deepest shining to pull upon your love, bringing you into a dance that spans the space between you and gives shape and elegance and pattern to the daily life of all you touch. And what if you are the rain forever falling, and forever rising back out of the embrace of your love, only to fall back in once again? Then you offer yourself fully to that revolution, giving your body completely to the patterns of transformation that through your fluidity, nourish the growth of the world...

travel unravels me

ladyapples — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:25:26 GMT

world keeps turning flames keep burning my mind an inferno infernal internal combustion distrusting its own occasional urges surges of powerful yearning im learning still to unwind the intertwining improve my timing (and yet i find myself rhyming) combining rhythm and sound as i continue to ground astounding how high the sky seems how unreachable dreams seem not every kingdom needs a queen not every projection needs a screen sometimes i just want to scream silent and loud drown it all out the incessant self loathing who even cares about clothing anyways? but then i take a deep breath or two expand into the blue of the sky and the sea where there's no you and no me just a field of intention where we can heal any wrench in the works or the gut any patterns and ruts i could drive myself nuts but instead i crack open farther this is the hard part i talk to the trees i let bugs bite my knees offer blood offer tears offer sweat offer years of my life to whatever is worthy (trying not to catch scurvy) just me open palmed raise a glass drop the balm kiss my ass right or wrong i am here i am free i am clear i am she who eats fruit kinda wild kinda cute in my awkward human suit recruiting for the crucial crusade the renegade parade the earnest charade wouldn't trade it for anything not one breath not one step not one kept secret unveiled not one tear's salty trail...

Serpent Path Symbiosis

ladyapples — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:41:59 GMT

landing at home after the final festival of the season... what a cycle it has been! Just wanting to take a moment to offer my profound gratitude and inspiration for the work that was done on behalf of ourselves and the collective during the Serpent Path ritual workshop (and the Equinox prayerformance) at Symbiosis this past weekend. With the challenge and blessing of a thunderstorm right at the beginning of the workshop, hectic transition to an indoor space (thanks to La, Lynx and Maze for sharing their time and space with us!) there were over 80 shining faces so present for the entire process. As soon as we began, I felt the palpable energy and attention of everyone present, the air was electric with intention and magic. I have rarely been privaleged to participate in such a focused and potent collective ritual. This work is one of the most important things in my life right now, and Isis and I are continuing to cultivate and build off of what we have been working on for the last several years. For those of you who are interested, I have started a tribe as a way to stay informed, to continue communicating about this work and to participate from wherever you might be: http://tribes.tribe.net/serpentpath again, our deepest gratitude and blessings for this work, this community and this life.

Synergenesis Hiatus

ladyapples — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:46:13 GMT

greetings familia and visionary culture crafters galore... as you may have heard through the whisperweb by now, Synergenesis is not happening this year. its a big deal for me and for many others too. its time to take a step back, asess the situation and see what comes through. it feels clear that memes are shifting, that channels are morphing, and as a visionary culture crafter myself, i feel the urge to continue evolving, not sticking to the same routine, but pushing levles of interactivity, of collaboration, of what visionary can actually mean. so we're taking a break, shifting the scope. i would like to offer my profound gratitude to all of the amazing people who have supported and participated in the unfolding that Synergenesis has been these last 3 years, especially to Trichter, Delvin, Sijay and Isis for your above and beyond levels of interactivation. The process of producing these events has taught me so much, particularly about what is possible when a project is truly undertaken as an offering, and how abundance and inspiration flow like water into wine from open palms. There is another event in the works for early November, an entirely unforseen experiment in collective reality crafting and realtime mythmapping. Many of you are familiar with the work I have been doing for years on liminality, and this event will be a culmination point of much of that work. Highly interactive, dissolving all boundaries between life and art, audience and performer, work and play, prayer and joke, song and map. keep your inner ears tuned for sendings from the space between... between here and there we will meet in mid air in order to learn how to fly love like water (fluid and undeniable) eve LadyApples (drawing above by jessie rose vala)

reaquainted eloquence

ladyapples — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:37:25 GMT

the confession is this: as of last tuesday i had not written a poem in well over a year. for reals. some real part of me was truly afraid it might not ever happen again. it has been more than slightly traumatic, no exaggeration. but last week, my first morning on site at the Glade Festival (a whole other entire adventure whose story will have to wait...Nectar Temple Represent!!) awakened to the sunrise and this just poured through...i was crying, so filled with joy and relief that the words had made me their own once again. so here it is, rough and raw and real...in profound gratitude to the muse, for blessing me with her presence. i am forever her servent. Grandmother Oven Song I am calling to your rising hunger to the thirst of each day even as you are still being digested by your dreams I am already cooking I am already preparing your feast gathering aromatic bundles to flavor this body to feed it back to itself through your mouth small songs escape me to deepen the broth to temper the salt of sweat and tears to lend subtlety to this ocean soup blood feast eat of this body this daily bread I am nothing if not consumed in each moment by your life's insatiability the long road of seeking leads finally to your open mouth my child, my children's children my walking flowering song body home this winding open mouthed journey towards your fullfillment is my only song this body of words and herb bundles and yarn only to be cooked inside my singing only to be a meal for your wildness to call another day of breath back from the edge of rampant dullness do not think for a moment my boiling blood is not insulted by those meager meals of plastic phrases do not think i am not starving with our unfocused gluttony eat of this body it is your own hunger that feeds me only in your heart's stomach can i live forever only in your profoundest nourishment thirst am i eternally reborn listen, I am clanking the pots listen, I am warming the kitchen i am calling to your hunger listen, my child's child and you are already fed by my song

Pastoral (or, a sweet apocalypto)

ladyapples — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 17:00:41 GMT

On that day, when pressed, the car horns blare Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. All the leather handbags fill with livers, lungs and bile ducts. Fires spring from every corner trash can and pigeons pour out of the flaking blue mailboxes. All the oversexed underfed elite population of the billboards start in on it doggystyle. Almost nobody notices. Everyone out and about begins walking in synch, the collective echo of their footsteps chipping away at the cement between the bricks. The buildings shiver in anticipation. Then, clouds of colored dust come gusting down the avenue, leaving entire crowds crimson and cobalt and chartreuse in their wake. At the same moment that all of the third floor windows explode in unknowable silence, all the men over 40 are consumed by an undeniable craving for hot dogs. The pushcart vendors are mobbed. At each intersection, a circle of children, a gleeful spinning. The air fills with the smells of fake hair, burnt sugar and cheap warm beer. All the cars crash. In the middle of each block, the same man, tap dancing for spare change, unfazed.

mama sang

ladyapples — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:13:11 GMT

what if sacred prostitute was the misinterpretation of several shortsighted misguided over confident insecure old men who hadn't taken a moment to praise the mother in a long long time centuries of culture what if we lived in service to she who flowed through us offering up the nectar to anyone smart enough to notice and touch the earth in reverence and devote what ever art form they chose to turn their lives into to the propigation of her memery mammery glands upturned hands intricate strands of lighweaving artisans non-partisan alliance of heros and fools makers and breakers of rules zen sand rakers undertakers and those who move through their hands after having said good bye to this life hello to the next

On Reaching and What I Found There

ladyapples — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:20:06 GMT

I. Wings There is a spot at the intersection of Bryant and 16th in San Francisco where the streetcar guide wires intersect in a haphazard gridwork against the sky. I pass through this space daily, and daily those wires are thick with birds. Occasionally I am stopped at a red light for the moment when suddenly the perfect paper cut out silhouette dissolves into a chaos of wings and not even the much anticipated change to green can drag my eyes from all that flight. How do they move like that? Such a wild careening and yet at some inexplicable moment all those black bodies are whirlpooled back down onto the wires as to a magnet. We have all heard about how the bones are hollow, about how they are born with the world already mapped inside their tiny brains. And while the mystery of that is enough for any normal day to hold, it is the flight itself, just above my reach, that keeps me through the cycles of the traffic light. Inching through rush hour once, on the New Jersey Turnpike, the light collapsing against the horizon, the bruise of it spreading into night and these enormous flocks of small black birds, diving and wheeling between the water towers and the toxic silos. Some rear end incident looming immanent before my utter distraction, I scribbled furiously on a scrap of paper against the steering wheel: that one might drape language on a flock of winter birds that it might take the shape of flight and the immensity that wings create I. Matches Sitting in a bar in Manhattan, sometime in my final year of college, my friend Kel taught me how to make a man and burn him. You take a paper match and carefully split its tail end down the middle about halfway. Legs. Then, truly meticulous now, you split each of the legs in half again, about three fourths of the way up to the head. Arms. The trick is then to find some fissure in the flat surface before you, just enough of a crack to jam the little man’s foot into so that he remains upright on his own. Touch a flame to the head and the true highlight is the fluid deathdance he does in relinquishing his form to the fire. We got inspired, Kel and I, and we made a whole clan of these figures and we took them home and we burned them all, stuck in a crack in the seat of my psychedelic red and black vinyl desk chair. And with each burning we changed the lighting or the angle and we videotaped the final ecstasies of the matchmen. Later that week, when I got the footage into the editing room and turned several of the burns into slow motion, the whole charade took on epic proportions. The way the arms would raise quickly above the head when first enflamed; how sometimes he would bend over backwards as the fire reached the feet like some tragic gymnast, while other times the head would fall gradually forward, until the last spark of life was relinquished gracefully to the swirling pattern of the terrain below. Each time was different and yet each time the paper figure became unmistakably alive, just in time to die. I sat for a long time, watching the burning forms, and at some point I jotted down: I would burn it all if it meant I could become the flame satisfied with burning. II. Wingless I once walked 3 miles in flip flops to get to a village in Bali where an entire flock of herons roosted in one huge tree. Once into the village, I walked past lines of men, crouched and holding fast to their brightly plumed fighting cocks, preparing for the evening’s entertainment. When I eventually reached the tree it was a spectacle of white. The ground beneath splattered thick with droppings, the branches heavy with rustling bodies, the air around them cut into blue ribbons by the constant coming and going. These were long beaked, long legged birds, awkward when forced to land and pace, but when airborne, the arctic landscape of their wingspan pushing steady against the rising warmth of the day, they were every dream of flight. I squatted across the road from the tree, wishing I had a cock to hold in front of me, some accepted reason to be there, not doing much of anything. I watched the tree and its population until it was just a pale silhouette against a darkening sky. Those birds had lives, had families, and purpose, and will. They had pleasure too, and ritual, and play. Or so it seemed from down below. When I finally stood, stretched my angry knees and made to go, I had to fight the urge to jump into the air; some part of me sure that after all that time observing I would certainly be able to join their flight. Later that night, in a café in town, I wrote the lines: I dreamt of waking as a bird among birds and the impossibility of falling. II. Matchless When my little brother Jacob was 11, and home schooled, he became obsessed with making fire using only a bow drill, in the tradition of his favorite teacher, Gilbert Walking Bull, a Lakota elder. Whenever I would come home to Vermont from college in Manhattan to visit, we would sit together in the backyard as he demonstrated to me some part of the painstaking process: carving the bow, twisting natural found fibers into cordage for bowstring, finding the right kind of wood for the spindle and the fire board, making tiny shavings to catch off the coal, should he actually manage to create one. It took him nearly a year of carefully perfecting each stage of the procedure before he managed to make an actual coal and then even longer to turn that coal into an actual fire. But finally, one early spring day, we stood together, warming our tired hands on his proud flames. We didn’t really speak much, just stared into the dancing orange heat between us, watching it work its transformation on branch after branch. We had started the fire but it had a life separate from us now, working some magic beyond our range. I had recently read Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm, and was utterly taken with this notion of the artist’s necessary willingness to walk skinless, vulnerable and dedicated in the world like a voluntary burn victim; to set one’s world on fire in order to have light to work by. At 21, having tasted intellectual indulgence of boarding school, the saturated decadence of New Orleans and the unabashed ambition of New York City, I was ready to offer myself to this passionate life; I was tempted to jump into the flames. Instead I moved around them to my brother and pretended to push him in, and then to save him. Later that night, the rest of the house asleep around me, doodling while on the phone, I wrote: Something about fire about how fire’s living leaves its own evidence. III. Reaching Flight rides the air, occupying the liminal space between earth and sky. Flight exists within the body of the flying thing and this body of mine longs to know it, but won’t, not really. Fire eats the air, combusting the dynamic between earth and sky. Fire exists upon the body of the burning thing and this body longs to know it, but won’t. It is within the process of observing the activated space within which flight and fire live that my own two hands reach out to try and grasp a hold of them and find instead the only graspable thing to be the language of that reaching. It is in the careful and fearless ordering of words that I have come continually closest to combustion, to transformation, to rising high up of my own accord, and to inhabiting the space between earth and sky. we say daybreak the fracture giving birth to structure here the immensity that wings create here a mapping made of song

hysterical, er, historical

ladyapples — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 03:30:19 GMT

that's right my gaggle of giggling allies... the funginears are actually rehearsing. i knew canada was a revolutionary place but jeez... we have gathered together in the Krystal Unicorn Fortress in the magical land of Onceaponna to raise our collective fundalini in an entirely new and previously unfathomed spectickle of ruffles and sparkles and unicorny punch (drunk) lines. we are feeling the love like never before and are practically busting out of our tutu's with excitement to bring our next levelness to y'all. On March 30th we begin our first ever full frontal west coast tour with Lorin and Zilla and lemee tell you kidz you aint never seen it like this before we're not even kidding except that we're totally kidding... the thing about the shows is that if you wanna catch our set you gotta show up at the beginning of the night. I know you're used to first light of morning psychedelic cereal with cartoons style but this is a whole new funginears we've got plots! we've got harmonies! we've got set changes that dont involve manually rotating a 10 x 10 and stepping all over disgruntled dj's! (and neverfear there's still plenty of room for utter meyhem as well) but yer gonnna have to show up on the early side to catch it... we promise to make it worth your while. it goes like this: March 30th: Santa Cruz 31st: San Francisco April 2: Weed 3: Ashland 5: Eugene 6: Portland 7: Seattle 10: Bellingham 13: Vancouver 14: Whistler Ski and Snowboard Festival why not hop on for the whole tour man, it'll be like jerry never died.

call me through

ladyapples — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 02:23:39 GMT

the roosters call me to it the green openings call me to it the thick warm light for breathing calls me to it here i am waking into this dream again flown for days far away from one home to another in an effort to give space to the art that calls me to myself i have not given these voices that would speak through me their due they are a little dissapointed with me but i do so much i whimper at their blessed feet but they do not care if i am manifesting gathering spaces for the art of others to pass through into the open arms of our tribe they do not care if i am puppeteering joy and wildness into our mornings they do not care if i am constantly crafting community building worlds for our lives to live us into the light these voices only want me to speak them into the world so they might live too so they might shape the world as only they know how of course i will never cease the other works but this moment i dedicate to these voices that would use me i dedicate this self as a vessel for a more specific song to sing through i open myself to the word to the utterly unique magic of the word to language's liminal lullaby so i might return to the world with an offering of my deepest gifts and freshfaced openhearted sing the next cycle into the light

Restless

ladyapples — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 01:56:17 GMT

I can hear in your voice you were born in one country and will die in another, and where you live is where you’ll be buried, and when you dream it’s where you were born, and the moon never hangs in both skies on the same night, and that’s why you think the moon has a sister, that’s why your day is hostage to your nights, and that’s why you can’t sleep except by forgetting, you can’t love except by remembering. And that’s why you’re divided: yes and no. I want to die. I want to live. Never go away. Leave me alone. I can hear by what you say your first words must have been mother and father. Even before your own name, mother. Long before amen, father. And you put one word in your left shoe, one in your right, and you go walking. And when you lie down you tuck them under your pillow, where they give rise to other words: childhood, fate, and rescue. Heaven, wine, return. And even god and death are offspring. Even world is begotten, even summer a descendant. And the apple tree. Look and see the entire lineage alive in every leaf and branching decision, snug inside each fast bud, together in the flower, and again in the pulp, mingling in the fragrance of the first mouthful and the last. I can tell by your silence you’ve seen the petals immense in their vanishing. Flying, they build your only dwelling. Falling, they sow shadows at your feet. And when you close your eyes you can hear the ancient fountains from which they derive, rock and water ceaselessly declaring the laws of coming and going. -Li-Young Lee, Book of my Nights

borderland crossing

ladyapples — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 02:09:20 GMT

through the weave to another space after taking flight (every bird girl's dream) making time in the space between (after the usual haze at the vancouver airport on account of this incident back in 99 with a bunch of hooligans marching in solidarity with a bunch of these native peoples, Akwasazni peoples, all crossing the border together on their Akwasazni land that the border had been placed across, making it so they had to deal with a god damned border crossing to go from one place to another within their own homelands, well see i was with a bunch of hooligans headed up to make a ruckus at the G8 convention in montreal, i was fresh back from 2 months cooking at this ashram in the Bahamas, and there we were all amaking this crossing together, in solidarity, after they made us a whole meal of bbq and corn and long story short (too late) there was some evidence of illegality in my vehical and they found it and busted my chops pretty bad for a minute called out the dogs and all but eventually the official lady she took me into the bathroom and made me flush and told me she could have kept me out of Canada forever but she wasn't gonna do that she just made me stay on my side and if that happened now it wouldn't be so simple i reckon, and now every time i fly into vancouver they have to look me in the eye and ask me if there have been any incidents since and i get earnest and proper and somehow it all works out, even though once they held joshua and daveed for many hours and grilled them mercilessly for less. (give thanks.)) here on the other side of those borderlands i am equally surrounded by snow and by family and my brain rests a bit after the wildest ride yet free flow of saturn returning through the summer's unhinged fullness into f a l l through elfincones by the riverside through blowing the top off the fundalini temple through intricate rituals of foolish journeys into this third round of synergy's genesis (into the arms of a bandit) filled with the emptiness of offering breathless with the sigh of contentment dancing in the stillness of life made art again now quiet focus internal architectures of becoming turning within to cultivate the further offerings listening to voices unheard by anyone else so i might sing another (r)evolution into the light inside a canopy of only that special light that passes through ice reflecting off snowdrifts i open to the illumination of winter's reveries offer my whole self to this turn of the cycle (as dee madrone xaaq make piano strum background perfection) (as sijay blissful with his love on the couch) (as zoriaan fresh washed fondles a blade and dreams of dragon visitations) (as each of you wherever you are passes this moment with us)

going coastal

ladyapples — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:22:40 GMT

that's right kids i'm flying in to vancouver just in time for cabaret l'amour fou nucleus crew's new shenanigan fandango spectacular and tarran will play magic into motion and nayana might cause your heart to stop but then jumpstart again and dee will make swoon and swagger and rup will spout metaverse and sara will call out truth unfettered in meter and candice will set the world on fire to illuminate your eyes and gabe will untangled the skycords and alison will travel our prayers upwards o me and o my who knows what else is in store but i do hope anyone a stones throw from east van will meet me there at 8 sharp to revel in the informal formlessness of radical subtlety 1882 adanac st footstomp for emphasis chimes for the fae who whisper at our immanent glee

i know it's silly but

ladyapples — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:00:55 GMT

my very favorite wrap shawl thingie in the whole world went missing around Synergenesis time and there were tons of people everywhere and i thought maybe one of you lovlies wound up with it and will magically return it to my lovin arms it really is my favorite its my home planet i get lost staring at the colors for loooong moments it smells just like me i never had a blankie ever not till now oh please wont you have it for me back please?

Synergenesis Post-Meta

ladyapples — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:50:26 GMT

breaths in and out empty and filled and empty again integrating the infinite blessings of this past week Synergenesis was such a deep teaching for me how we can come together focus intention catalyze culture craft reality collectively i am filled to the brim with gratitude for all the amazing creatures who aligned to bring this dreaming through i would love to hear people's honest reflections of the event the shadows and the lights all ways integrating evolving the templates mapping the myth let this be another beginning filled with the emptiness of offering deepest bows and highest praise for you my family it is an honor to live in service to you with you eve : ladyapples

life after the day of the dead

ladyapples — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:22:35 GMT

last week as the veils were thinning my old friend former partner in crime and very occasional lover brad will was shot in the chest and killed in oaxaca by paramilitaries busting up a teacher's strike he's one of many murdered wrongfully in the world that day. this is the way the breathing part of his story ends but it is not where the living part of his story dies. brad was a pain in the ass for sure. me and my roomate brooke lived in a ridiculously nice and even more ridiculously priced apartment on 11th between A and B, just a few short blocks from the 7th street squat where Brad lived, free of rent, and sometimes heat and water. He ate a lot of our food, and left a lot of dirty dishes in our sink, spent a lot of nights on our sofa while we were busy plotting the revolution. He taught us tons. Brad and I and Brook and a few others (will, louis, steve, ariane, arrow...) started Reclaim the Streets NYC in '98, inspired by rabel rousers in the UK. We started out throwing large scale unpermitted street parties to protest the privatization of public space under Guiliani. It was Brad's idea to use forest defense tactics in the urban streets. After months of planning, at the appointed moment, i pulled my big ole station wagon into the intersection at Astor Place and Broadway and put it into park. Brad and a few others ran into the middle of the intersection and in seconds had erected a 30 ft aluminum tripod, which louis quickly scaled, pulling the rope ladder up behind him. A sound system with a radio reciever was pulled into the middle of the street. Many blocks away, a non discript white van held a dj, some decks and a radio transmitter, broadcasting on a pirate radio frequency, being picked up by the system in the street. We had a party on our hands. It became the stuff of nyc activist legend. eventually the cops came, they couldnt pull the tripod down, cause a person was in it, we were a bunch of people dancing in the street, attempting to meet the absurdity of their tactics with joy and creativity. This was pre-patroit act. Before they changed the term activist to domestic terrorist. and we had told everyone to bring boom boxes. so when the cops took the sound system and shut it down, hundreds of boom boxes all turned to that same pirate frequency and the same music came pouring forth from a hundred different invisible points throughout the crowd. do you hear that you war mongering money starved power raped anger filled hate brokers? when you steal what you think is the source of our power it surges forth from infinte untraceable sources. count on it. we threw some epic subway parties, everyone meeting at a given platform, at a given time, all in the color of that train line, marching bands, portable sound systems, drinkin and smokin and converting the other riders to our cause...one time we all rode the orange line all the way out to coney island and got off and paraded through the streets to the beach and spun fire and drank tequila and at one point brad and i stole off and made love for the first time on the sand...the air was cold and thick with salt and fire smell...i was surprised by the sweetness of him...he was this crazily dedicated semi fanatical warrior of the people...it all seems like a really long time ago... so many lifetimes in one person's journey so many stories unfolding into this one world a soft moment in the dark for the way this one breathing stopped a silent undeniable spark in that dark for the life that wont be lost blessings on your passage brad rest in peace

Daylight Savings End

ladyapples — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 04:28:11 GMT

I was wondering green and how it rises towards the light. I was singing alive the warm air and the cool air below it. You were there and our feet patterned memory at the bases of the flaming trees our feet patterned what comes next through the wet-coated grass. We knew the day would wait for us one hour so we danced stillness into motion and back again And when the day restarted itself we walked together inside it aching with the novelty of return.

love song for an inbreath

ladyapples — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 22:40:36 GMT

dont you know this universe birthed stars to give sparkle to your dreamtime sighs dont you remember how we ran scattershot through lightning fields of nameless birdforms dont you remember how every moment is a memory remembering herself into some new form these words that fly through me from so far away so close are not memories but novelty's love song to the earth just know that inside of each moment's secret breath your name is embroidered in invisible thread just know that gravity is not a law but the undeniability of this planets love for all her children and the space we hold is divinity beholding itself (strange beauty) dont forget to remember it is we who write the story (though it is the story that lives us) and this story is still unfolding (art by marco minaya)

Struck

ladyapples — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 20:41:52 GMT

108 years before the day it holds her dreaming a redwood is struck by lightning. A late summer storm, the sky almost emptied, and the tree so tall. She dreams about it that first night, she is not in the dream herself but she feels it like she’s the tree; first solid and wet and growing so slowly its almost stillness, then struck electric hot and glowing in the middle of a nighttime turned momentarily into its own negative. And then hollow and so black at the core that from the outside, looking in, it’s a view directly to the center of the void. When she first gets to the forest it is the only place she can fall asleep. Those first hours inside the forest she is listening to the trees breathing and shifting, years of rot padding her bare feet. The light source moves slowly from behind her to before, until thick shafts of dust-filled light begin to cut through the woods all around her. She carefully avoids stepping into any of them as she continues walking, she doesn’t want to feel that heavy light on her own skin, not sure what would happen. She wanders, watching as one after another diagonal pathways are illuminated into burnished gold. Suddenly there is something else, the trees have given way to a curving expanse of rounded stones; there used to be a river. Stepping out off of the bank she feels how it used to rush through, how it used to be wet and deep where now, somehow, she manages to stand. The wind moves in fast off the mountains, following the same path as the river, whispering unfamiliar names into her as it blows through. The quickness of the air draws her gaze skyward, she is wondering about yesterday, and then she sees the birds. Dozens of them, just riding the patterns of the air, stilling their wings and allowing the currents to dance their hollow boned bodies along for whole surrendered moments. She slowly realizes that these creatures aren’t going anywhere; they are just riding the warm air of the day as it fades and rises, so at ease its almost lazy. It is only a dull ache in the back of her neck that draws her back down to the earth, aware that by watching the birds at their flying, she can see the wind. And then a rushing sweep of nomad fragrance carrying voices down from the mountain… Through here there the next trail marker now Slowly I cant even see you Follow the sound of my voice She stands knee deep in the memory of a river, and listens carefully to the sound of the worlds around her. It feels as though she should be able to pluck some familiarity out from the wind’s many voices but nothing touches her memory, nothing rings a bell. She reaches down and plucks one stone from among the many. She concentrates fully upon it, resting silent in her palm, and asks it what her name is. Then in one smooth motion she extends her arm behind her and arches the stone high up into the air, watching it fly over the dried up river, listening closely for her name. But the voice of the stone is lost inside the swirling of the wind’s messages from the mountain. She closes her eyes, raises her face up into the last of the day’s light and tries to stop trying to remember. She fingers the unfamiliar amulet around her neck and listens to birds fill the space where her name might have been. She opens her eyes to a sky blank as the past, wide as the future. Not a bird in sight and the last bright edge of the sun just sinking, so quick, behind the mountain. She walks backwards towards the border between the riverbed and the forest, examining the darkening sky for any trace of bird, but the night has disappeared them all. Exhaustion seeps through her suddenly, a wave of heavy molasses coating her perceptions. She turns into the woods and there in front of her is the tree, waiting patiently to teach her darkness and how to find your peace inside it. She stands in its center, surrounded by the charred evidence of some ignited moment, 108 years past. She curls her body into a shape that she last held inside the first body that ever held her and offers her groping mind to the solidity and to the emptiness of this place. Almost unaware that she has slept, her eyes open into the tree, and the first filtered light of an unnamed day. It is a quiet moment or two before she remembers the dream; the wet stillness, the electric flash, the scorched remains. She is filled with the memory of it and then with the sudden knowledge that her name is written on the inside of this tree.

girl

ladyapples — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:24:25 GMT

She sat on the stoop and cleaned grit out of her fingernails with the corner of her sharpest tooth. It tasted like dirty yesterday and she knew it was a gross thing she did but somehow it didn’t register any deeper than that—not enough to stop eating the smallest trash of the day before. Something crunched like when she was too lazy to really wash the spinach before cooking it. The edges of her cuticles were lined with dark red grime that she recognized to be old blood and maybe some mushroom gravy. But that day it came from had passed like any other, caked on her hands or not. She rose suddenly without a thought and her knees almost buckled at the change. How long had she been sitting there? Was she waiting for anything in particular? Hadn’t she decided waiting was a bad idea, a waste of her one wild precious life? Hot running water would be the thing, maybe even a soft place to rest. It felt small and sweet and strange to want normal expected things. Reasonable things for a girl to want. She bent to pick up a feather from the gutter and ran it along her cheek and jaw and back again. Wondering where the bird was now, she stopped and held her open, closed, face up into the sun, allowing the familiar tragedy of winglessness to wash over her with the hot light. Icarus. What a way to go. Maybe she could stand here until she turned into a tree, bark would be as good as skin and if she was never going to fly she might as well take root. There are only so many things worth doing in this world. Staying in one place. Moving between places. Smelling. Letting go. She kept walking, moving the feather over her skin, eyes closed into the sunlight. Moving through warm darkness being one way to go. (photo: francesca woodman)

Becoming the Ancestor

ladyapples — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:18:04 GMT

I know where I came from. I know where I’ll go back in. between the two is mine to sing and yours if you’ll carry the tune. I know a song you can live off tall as stacked mountains curved as river’s labor towards sea. I’ve known singing like a war-cry against hunger, and singing like the hunger between rains singing like the rain’s first silence like the silence that teaches breath, and like the breath that keeps pace with walking I know where I’ve been coming from the long way round this world, I know a name or two for each time of day and night, each plant gone to seed, and each seed when it falls I name each step for a leaf on the Big Tree, I name each breeze for a wave on the water I’ll never see, I name each child for the Ancestor she is, or the one he’ll eventually be. Name so the world has a map that fits, not like a suit but like a shadow lengthening into night, sharpest when the light is high. Yes, I’ve sung the map fermenting sweet in dried up springs follow me if you like you know I’m going back in at the place where the song gets deep into quiet ground where the map gets back into Dreaming and if you’ve sung the song to a place of your name come on back in with me or stay and sing around the cycle another world or two.