Gotta Have Park

When I wrote that I competed with adults at the hardest school in the world—with the lowest admissions rate in the world—I meant it. I was vying for my class spot with people who had already lived a few lives and careers before me, which is about as daunting as it gets, not that anyone came to our defenses. We were their fodder; everyone's: the teachers, the administrations, the other students, and that included any/all adults working around us. People who try to excel by becoming talented fakes with great mimicry skills are very nervous people indeed, because they need much better, smarter people—to feed off of to survive—and that included the teenagers and very young adults we were back then, which was sort of like sending a young Jimi Hendrix into war involuntarily, to die for a country that denied him the right to drink at certain water fountains, let alone buy himself a real stiff drink before being shipped out to active wartime duty at 19-years old.

As much as we tried reconciling their presence at our school, it didn't seem fair to us, and we knew it, because we started making some noise, and then some much louder noise, until the "profs" who thought they could game us by sabotaging our expensive education got a real taste of working class life and the transfer student mindset. It sent them tail-spinning downward while taking potshots at kids like me, working three jobs at once while taking only studio classes, because I had essentially completed an entire Liberal Arts curriculum in just three short years, though that degree was unjustly held from me, too (in lieu of my transfer status), just like I was forced to complete my senior year of high school, even though I had completed the curriculum by junior year with college credits and a Regents diploma, but if the gifted left, who would be there to pay for all of your salaries? Right?

In retaliation for circulating a petition around campus asking for desktop publishing classes to be placed on our curriculum, equipped with the kinds of computers we actually use in the workplace, I was "blacklisted" by the very professors who were there to supposedly educate me. It didn't matter—just like it hadn't mattered in my educational past—because my mentor let me pursue my work in his classes as independent studies, which is, once again, like becoming a grad student as an undergrad, but, again, that doesn't pay for your two apartments in Providence and Brooklyn, does it, "Prof"? No! We did! We paid for that for you, so you could take open potshots at children, basically. It made for some very weird classes indeed. 

Take, for example, Ellie. She decided to play the "ethnic minority" game by wrongly trumpeting her prized European status to an openly disparaged minority like me, which made for the most awkward kiddie-adult conversations you could imagine, as she openly campaigned for me to get kicked out of "her" school that she attended as an undergrad at 34. Huh...that's so...odd. And it was. She would talk about her past as a forest ranger (why didn't she learn to draw while living all alone in a forest for months on end?), as we pondered how the fuck she could go from living on Mount St. Helen during its epic volcanic blast to sitting in on our kiddie crits, because I sure as fuck never had the time to work on a portfolio before attending college, let alone blow off one career for our kiddie art classes, in comparison.

It was highly suspect and dubious in the extreme, but just like every other situation I've faced in my life. I had to make it, like a Marine dropped behind enemy lines with no lines of communication or ammo left, nursing a serious bullet wound or two while evading capture and/or the enemy. If I didn't attain a degree from this school, there was no job waiting for me in the outside world, and I didn't want to die from homelessness or starvation, which is just like today. 

I write to you from a public library that's becoming increasingly hostile to me, because the director here has already called the police on me for standing up to one of their Special Needs crafts "teachers" for harassing me by lurking behind me as I typed, and then aggressively staring at me, mouthing words at me as I typed to you all, which, just like then, resulted in me attaining a police contact on the force by an officer who flat out told me not to even bother to talk to anyone at this location again. "Just call us instead." That's how bad it gets. 

Like every moment that's precious in this life we live, so is our land. We live off the land that grows the food we need to live. No healthy land, no food for the animals to eat, and that includes us. If we do not protect our precious resources—like our land and water—then we do not survive. Sometimes—like my work, education, and life story—it is that simple. It becomes that basic, our survival. No food=no us. No bees=no pollinators. It all comes back to our defense and self-defense skills, and so, even though adults with more money, more experience, and a heck of a lot more time than me still tried to kill me off, here I still am, fighting for my survival while I fight for all of us. 

So, Ellie, even though, in your misguided hatred and aggression of an artistic life that was never yours to live by destiny, I dedicate today's fight to you anyway, for a t-shirt you wore back in the day that read "Gotta Have Park", and even though you wore it to protect your own government job as a forest ranger, I still believe in its message. What cannot die has never really lived, as far as I'm concerned. Live.

http://www.earthshareny.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdevelopment 
http://www.environmentnewyork.org/ 

Sky Lines

Intersecting Lines (Pearl River, NY. December 2014).

Last week I spotted a gorgeous crescent moon still hanging brightly in the full light of day. It was beautiful, until something else obscured the object of my original intentions: the many, many intersecting lines of a thousand or so airplane chemtrails that fill the sky every day in the tri-state area, spewing toxic waste high up in the atmosphere above us, which led me to another musing. Yes, I was safe down below, out of harm's way, but what do we do about our atmosphere? Who protects that, fragile as it is, and hard to reach, way out of our grasp. How do we clean it up? 

I trust that this daily missive reaches someone out there with the authority and courage to make the neccesary changes needed to protect life, fragile as it, as this pollution must surely reach us on the ground after falling from the sky above. That's the nature of my faith. 

Amen to you during this Advent season, a humble time of repentance and reflection during our hectic daily lives. May you look up into the light, and see the truth as it is written before your eyes, like lines drawn by the hand of G-d. This is not our coloring book to write upon, like irate children scrawling across a blank page.  

We belong to this earth and one another.

Dark Shadows

Shadow cast across pavement.

The time has come for our annual trip around the sun, happening by increments each and every day. Shadows stretch, grow, and lengthen to longer heights; the sun sets earlier and faster. We wake up to gradually lowering temps, and we rotate our closet by exchanging space for summer clothes to winter ones. 

Why fight the laws of nature and its' choral of universal music? Time to get out your sweaters, play in the fallen leaves, and drink some hot chocolate with deliciously melting marshmallows. Just go with the flow. You really don't have much of a choice.

Shadowy outline on driveway.

Goodnight Sun, Hello Moon

Wildflowers, Wooden Fences, and a Few Weeds

Coming in for a closer look....

For today: this botanical duo from a summer's afternoon, as we officially say "goodbye" to another glorious season here on Earth. Fall begins September 22!

...reveals all sorts of intricate details.

My man, St. Francis! What's up?!

A spot I hadn't noticed that before.

I took up the practice of Roman Catholicism again several years ago, after leaving the faith of my youth for many years. After my parents divorced (a huge "no-no" for strict Catholics), my mother asked me to continue with my religious studies until Confirmation, the rite of passage that marks our early teens, after which I would decide for myself whether or not I wanted to continue with church and religious practice. I didn't continue, for a bunch of reasons. I was a teen, I needed a parent to drive me, and during that time, both of my parents were uneven, sporadic churchgoers at best.

What is that? A statue?

But it had always been my intention to fold it back into my life later on: after school, work, and travel, I would return home and settle down, at which time I would become reacquainted with my faith, in order to practice it alongside my future husband and children. Despite a brief marriage that was not my choice by design, I've held on to that life plan. I hadn't really considered getting married until 40, long after I'd seen the world as an artist, and so it has come to pass.

Yep, it is. Lemme guess, who could it be?

I wanted to reintroduce myself to Catholicism, so I could discuss and lead the conversation with my family, building a common base of values, ethics, culture, traditions, and practices that would continue long after I was gone, and so that will be, too. We are in the year two thousand and fourteen, in reflection of that very same practice amongst our followers. Because our faith is among the strictest branches of religious practice, it was something I deferred picking up until later, which I did at a parish in Brooklyn, named after a saint in the tradition of my man Francis.

Yep, it's my main man St. Francis as a birdbath, ever tending to animals.

It is more than a series of "rules", though to an uneducated outsider I could see why it seems so restrictive. It is an intellectual tradition. We attend school during the day through the state, and after hours, we attend parochial schooling: that's double than the American average, something I forget until I start conversing with someone who lacks the discipline and foundation that comes with a rigid and difficult educational background. Now that I practice it again, it's no surprise to me that these deeply held values have re-emerged in my life to manifest my commitment anew: I've been abstinent and celibate for years, a sort of baptism back into my faith, where once the doors were closed to my college partying and city lifestyle. Some coincidence.

Compassion, beauty, nature, gardens, a love for the outdoors. Yep, that's me.

Since then, I've had more of these supposed "coincidences" come into my life, like finding an almost hidden devotional garden tucked into a development near me that I hadn't seen for many months, even though I walk past the apartment complex almost every day. Usually I cross the street at a certain point, but one day I didn't, and then I saw it: a garden with a statue, tucked under some pine trees in a courtyard with table and chairs.

Hey! I bet whoever made this is like me!

So here he is, the leader of our Franciscan tradition, a movement so powerful, we continue to uphold his principles today: serving to love and protect the animals that reside within this garden that is our planet Earth, refashioned for us to reflect on as a birdbath. It's something me and my main man, the patron saint of animals, would do anyway; we'd provide a welcoming environment for all G-d's creatures to dwell in. It has affected every aspect of my life, even when I don't actively look for it. That's the power of mythology, the pull of a story so strong, it endures until it becomes an almost human type of forever.

You ain't gonna top that, honey, so don't even try it with me. Someone's got my back, big time: http://franciscantradition.org/about.

The Perfect Summer: August in New York

Beautiful fluffy clouds, after a recent, brief summer rain. So normal!

We've had a cooler than average summer this year, which has made me extremely happy. First of all, there's no power outages, outrageously high utility bills, or constantly running air conditioning that's smells moldy from old filters; a huge break indeed. 

A symphony of beautiful weather set in the skies.

But more importantly, this crucial respite from insanely high temperatures gives the Earth a chance to cool down after many years of escalating global warming, temperatures so high from human waste, that we have melted polar ice caps and destroyed entire coral reefs from artificially warm waters, as well as displacing human populations from their sea level homes.

Ah! Another gorgeous sunset behind a stand of large trees.

It comes as no surprise to me that it's been one of the best summers I've had in a long, long time. I sleep comfortably every night with a fan blowing and open windows. I wake up happy and refreshed from actual cooled air that I can comfortably breathe in when I open the curtains to let in the beautiful morning daylight. 

The  glow of an orange sunset; a New York summer's day.

This is the kind of summer I remember from my youth: warm, sunny days with cool, breezy nights. It's also no coincidence that these are optimal growing conditions for this area, as one recent broadcast on local news suggested. A berry farmer in New Jersey said this was by far the best bumper crop they've ever seen, with the longer season extending the harvest to December.

The daylight's music fades, as the night chimes in.

Still, true to a human's ridiculously selfish nature, many an idiot talking head has loudly grumbled on-air, like some grade-school fuck-up on summer break, that all this "horrible" cool air is wrecking their friggin' beach time, to which I say this: go fuck yourself. I mean it!

A cloud adds punctuation, a single note at the end of the day.

If your spoiled bitch ass is bothered by the planet cooling itself back into good health, then go buy yourself a stupid fucking tanning bed and burn yourself into a compulsively fried oblivion, because we've had enough of your stupid fucking bullshit.

The perfect light.

Or, go buy a cheapo ticket to Boca in Florida, where you can bake your brains out (what's left of them, anyway) in some generically bland condo, you short-sighted, evil, corporate-owned cunt. I hate you! 
This is war >:o(

The music winds down, and the light grows softer.

For the rest of the decent Americans and other people like me, I raise my glass of freshly squeezed organic lemonade in your direction, as I put my feet up on the wood railing of an old house somewhere in the Hudson River Valley region, watching another spectacular light show that's delivered free of charge by Mother Nature herself. 

Perfect pink and orange lighting.

It's some of the best light I've ever seen in our skies, which is also not a surprise to me, a long-time watcher of weather and clouds. I'm rooting for Planet Earth all the way, (which we are just a small part of, despite the blown up arrogance and tiny penis insecurity of some fucking on-air tool), every single day, with every seemingly "small" choice I make, many of them at the grocery store, when I choose local and fresh organic foods, higher priced as they may be than the high fructose shit on sale for a rip-off $.79, now that word has spread about food and beverage company's poison profits, the shit that also seeps into our groundwater and land with every acid rainfall we have, with yet another weirdo tropical storm that we endure. Who do you want to see win? I know my choice (and my conscience) is clear. Asshat.

Wow...

...pink and purple clouds say "goodnight"...

...to another perfect day in the Hudson Valley.

The Vortex

Whoa! Check out those clouds, dude! Totally "Stairway to Heaven".

Lately, what with the common regularity of Doomsday predictions now fully realized and acted out daily on t.v. and in movies, we've become highly sensitized to news weather deliberately, in order to boost ratings through hooking viewers on the active creation of fear, which propels the vulnerable amongst us to tune in angst, seeking solace from those Doctors of Weather (called "Meteorologists") in some ritualistic pattern of fear followed by soothing comfort, the balm to our collective anxieties. Maybe news forecasters can wear big, peaked hats painted with stars, like some hammy old actor playing Nostradamus to the hilt, so we get the point more readily!

It's true, we did actively melt the polar ice caps due to our own selfish neglect, but that's hardly what one could classify as "new" (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/05/as-we-know-it.html). What is new is our collective awareness of how that neglect has caused fires to rage uncontrolled, waters to overflow in streams, and tornadoes to rip through towns in increasing frequencies of violent intensity. There must be strong language to match!

More beautifully lit clouds. Gorgeous!

Enter the evil "Vortex", what was once dubbed the "Polar Vortex" in winter (to describe a fucking snowstorm, or a heavy downfall of snow once called a "blizzard", a common occurrence in the Northeastern U.S. and the Northern Hemisphere), now re-purposed for the summertime (with its pesky regularly occurring thunderstorms, also common in the Northeast) as simply, The Vortex, like some villain dressed in all-black from a mythical fairy tale fable.

I do understand the challenges behind selling something as banal as a heavy summer rainstorm, (because I'm a publishing professional, and selling something as simple as a good diet combined with regular exercise in book form must be fashioned anew with some fucked up gimmick, like the Neanderthals), and while I do understand it is hard to make that seem "new", I really don't fucking appreciate a thunderstorm artificially heightened to some weird new height as a fake movie villain (which, once again, is really weird, man, and you should totally know upfront that I'm on to you, so, enough already), because it's incredible as it is: a beautiful, and sometimes scary, act of nature.  
See it, and wonder.

After the cloud vortex, the sun sets beautifully.

Bravo! Another winning performance on Planet Earth! Shows over, folks.

Faith: The Assumption of Mary

Birds in flight, on Assumption Thursday 2013.

Mary is THE Mother figure in our Catholic faith, because she represents all women, the one woman who, above all others, understands the most a woman's particular pains: they begin at labor and continue as she suffers and cares for her family until the end of her life. Women don't get a lot of help in the Old Testament (the book that is the Torah in Judaism), but the New Testament casts us in a slightly better light. We still have to be sacrificial virgins, but the good news is it's an angel who gives the news to Mary that the Almighty Force of the Universe is the baby daddy, and that instead of a bloody sacrifice, Mary is risen body and soul into His Arms in Heaven. Oh. 

Plane in flight, on Assumption Thursday.

It kinda makes our every day pains seems trivial, right? But that's what the really big myths do. They cast our woes into perspective by showing us that throughout human time, women have always had big burdens to bear, because we bear the entire human race. That's a big deal, and we have the holidays to honor this essential truth: the most important thing we have in this world (and the next) is love, because love is the answer, and the power of a mother's love is the love that drives this whole ship called Earth. Honor her well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_of_Mary