Listening to Vashti Bunyan currently, she has this one song I absolutely adore called I remember learning how to dive. This song is great; I recommend looking it up! And her, she’s got a great folksy style. Ever since spending time with Diane in Bend, wherein we listened to a lot of music (Joan Armatrading, anyone?! How about Lana Del Rey’s born to die?), I’ve been listening to music a lot more than usual. Usually I mostly like silence, however, lately I’ve been popping those cds in and out and back in, right and left and upside down. All around really.

I also enjoyed this native American women’s voices collection called heartbeat, it has a lot of drumming and chanting and I really resonate with it. I think that kind of intonal and chant experiencing is a part of the human experience which is very healing, at times even entering a trance state where energies can move through the human form and clean em out. As Rumi says, this being human is a guest house, every day a new arrival, If you want to sweep em on through faster, singing is a great way to move the energy.

Tonight I am going to romance the freshly pressed chapbooks; there are ten for those close friends who have already ordered theirs which will be hand sewn and folded. The rest have a delicate and immaculate saddle staple, and they are ready to go. When I was outside of the bookstore in South Pas numbering the books x/50, etc, I cut my finger and bled on 16/50. So there’s one with blood on it, if that interests you.

The cover of the book holds an image of yggdrasil, the Norse tree of life which connects the heavens, earth and underworlds. It feels really appropriate and I’m pleased to have the image collect and contain the energies in the book.

Sitting outside earlier in the sun at a community garden, I read the book through a few times, and was amazed how so much of it didn’t really even feel Mine. It doesn’t seem like Me or Mine, yet more like some thought streams I’ve tapped into. A few of the pieces I wrote specifically in a sort of trance, an extraordinarily liberal state, one in which I wasn’t ‘thinking’ as much as I was feeling and letting the feelings and remembrances of experiences find words to wear in order to be embodied on the page.

I’m really curious how this book will touch people. It is quite sexy and that’s what most notice: Laurie at the bookstore and the lady at the common threads sewing store next door both opened it up straight to the middle and eyes got big and both of them smiled and ‘oh’, and one of them said, oh is this like 50 shades of grey (which I’m not really familiar with to say one way or the other, yet she said it’s swaying the general population who consume best sellers). I bet my family would have a difficult time swallowing it and one of my self-proclaimed prudish friends said if she saw it she would put it back down.

That’s not to say You won’t like it. In fact, I think the general population would be very drawn to it. It’s a book intended to raise questions, to push boundaries and inform and suggest new ones. It is a radical book (called earthy, after all, so it seeks to be grounded and rooted) and it contains stories collected over the last few years of my life. I see it as a culmination, a cumulative collection of my journey seeking union- through relationship, with myself spiritually and how this plays out in relationships and in sex and sensuality, and in relation to other so-called vices.

Through my Christian upbringing, I learned really good boundaries for sex: how important and meaningful it can be, how it is sacred and holy and to place this import on it in order to give it greater meaning. Sex has never been cheap for me, yet I have needed to explore, discover my own sex and set it free from the limiting Christian bounds handed to me, as I am a very sexual, sensual and curious being. Earthy is a synthesis of a lot of my findings and exploring.

It’s liberal in its sharings and evocative in the sense that I want to allow the words to carry a fire which will incite speech and communication around sex and these subjects we often don’t speak of publicly or in the light of day. I want to bring my shadow into the light, in some ways into the realm of the collective, seeking healing, freeing discourse on a community level.

So that’s where you come in, dear reader! I do not intend to write into the void, and it’s my desire to spark and hold space for a conversation. I’m not sure where this invitation will lead, yet if you read my book and have thoughts or feelings you want to share, I’m interested in hearing them and perhaps one day creating a safe and supportive space where we can voice and share, where these cloistered parts of ourselves can come out of hiding, if we want them to.

I also have the idea of making a collective chapbook/zine full of friends’ art. If this excites you or you think, I’d like to be a part of that! Let me know!

I feel all forms of art, like the music mentioned earlier, can act as conduits for consciousness and precipitate change. We are the true Author-ities of our lives and I feel challenged and pass on the challenge to Create Create Create as we birth, usher in and share the realms of consciousness we love to inhabit.

As I was telling a friend last night: when I have tripped on acid in the past, I tend to bring a notebook with me to write down my teachings, what I’m learning while in that state or how my perception changes and write down or draw what I feel are important messages for myself.

One important message is simply this:
It doesn’t matter if you’ve dropped the crayon
You can always pick it up again.