On the sun drenched afternoon of June 28th, Pride was shining brightly in a small town just south of Albuquerque, NM.

Though the Rio Grande has run dry far earlier then it should, the shockingly lush landscape that the river sustains leads the way to Belen, NM where an arts culture cultivated by immersive art experiences as authentic community is emerging on Becker Ave.

Arts innovator, curator and founder of the annual Rainbow Walk, Megan Malcom-Morgan, believes that art should serve a purpose beyond personal expression.

The Rainbow Walk, founded in 2021 and now in it’s sixth year, is a growing expression of that purpose, specifically seeking broader community impact through art as well as supporting underrepresented artists through immersive art experiences.

In an increasingly institutionalized and hierarchical system, artists are often expected to conform to academic and commercial standards rather than pursue more experimental or socially engaged work. In Belen, it’s all hands on deck not just to create art, but to create spaces in which art can exist.

The experience is, in a word, spectacular. This quiet, urban space comes alive in a rainbow of texture and light.

Hands dripping with seemingly living color, literally pouring pride onto the street and into the land, transforming a non-de script intersection into a vital, thriving and engaged expression of love.

This visceral collaboration, tactile yet ephemeral, leaves evidence of creation at a scale that feels larger than life.

Impermanent motion reveals a more permanent mark, demonstrating how a relatively small number becomes many hands. And how these many hands, through mindful planning, can spontaneously execute with exuberance and freedom, a creative act which fosters safety, broadens horizons and establishes identity for a community.

Inspiration is not abstract, it’s the lifeblood of creation. One moment’s impact on the consciousness, on the beliefs that comprise it, has lasting implications.

Beliefs lead to actions, they define what we do with our awareness, the choices we make and what we decide is possible.

At a crossroads in Belen on a sunny day in June, belief becomes action. Independent of systemic support, a community comes together to create what is needed. Life becomes art and art becomes life.

And somewhere over the rainbow, the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

Learn more about the Rainbow Walk at www.meganmalcommorgan.com

And this constant onslaught and pressure to conform and produce is quite threatening and the capacity for the artist to survive it is in no way certain.

We see this consumption and destruction and we see those who simply thrive on attention suck all the energy and take up all the space. So, like I said, protecting a certain kind of creative space is of peak importance to me and something I have been doing most of my life.

STAND

Throw it all away
Left with nothing
I can say I am here
Reeling in the final conflict

A warrior of illusion stands
Waiting for absolution
When everything melts
And all distinction whispers away

Until standing
Wasted and empty
There is only
Life and death

And in between
The warrior of belief
Holds fast to the one string
Tied to reality

And climbing
Across it
I seek
Security

Staying True

Which is to say, it really is no small feat to protect oneself, at any stage, on any level. It is truly radical to have one’s own vision or sense of self and to protect it. To prioritize it. To take that risk and to let go the “safer” path. To trust the process.

So, I absolutely encourage it. Not in a dogmatic way. The boundaries are generally never clear in that oh so obvious, this is definitely the way, kind of way, except when they are. But they are exceedingly clear in the way that jumping rocks across a rushing river are clear. You make that split second decision to push a little here and a little there, to take the big leap, or veer left and take those one, two, three little hops to the shore. A delicate balance that sometimes lands you head first in the freezing water and that is just the way it is.

It’s really a matter of what one actually wants. What one sees as their job, duty, goal, identity as an artist.

What is the point?

The point is really easy to define if you measure it by the mechanism. Which most people do in my experience. The point is less easy to define if you don’t. The problem with measuring by the mechanism is it produces diminishing returns. It rewards those that are willing to exist within that world and create relative to it.

It should be noted, that my position is not so much a judgement as it is a contemplation. Things are what they are. They tend to work in certain ways. So if I want to go somewhere, I want to take the road that goes there and not somewhere else. If I imagine a road goes somewhere it doesn’t because I refuse to read the signs and look at the map, then that is my own delusion. It changes nothing.

But, what if there is no road for where I want to go because no one has considered it useful to build one because that destination is not marketable within their system of reality?

When Maps Become Useless

A sense of direction is useful and necessary until it isn’t. It can become an illusion of accomplishment. An appearance of great movement and activity that ultimately produces nothing of substance. Just distraction. The illusion of life rather than the thing itself. That is the nature of consumption and profit. It reduces life to things, art to commodities. Our sense of satisfaction rooted in transactional relationships. And this all essentially leads to violence of one kind or another.

Personally, I don’t wish to create violent art. And when I succumbed to extreme illness and disability, I could not.

Creating Mindfully

I stopped trying to be good at what I was doing, I stopped having a sense of direction or goals or plans and just did it. Because I didn’t have a choice. The only choice was to be where I was.

So I let go of the idea that I was doing something for some reason and just embraced the practice itself. Which may sound perfectly reasonable to you. But I had been making my living from being a photographer or working in the industry for over a decade. It was all I had in that regards. So, to do it for no reason was quite significant to me at the time.

No reason may not be entirely true. The reason was, I wanted to. I wanted to see what would happen, what I would create if I didn’t judge it at all. If I didn’t require it to be particularly spectacular or important or difficult. If doing it was enough. If my own interest was enough.

And it turns out it was. Because I did in fact have something important to say. And it did turn out to be rather spectacular and difficult. I just didn’t know it would be. I didn’t expect people would be interested in my point of view because they generally weren’t. They wanted the important and the spectacular and were fairly certain that my vision didn’t conform for every number of reasons. Yes, I had encouragement also, but…

So I worked very, very slowly and quietly, in my own strange way for many, many years.

While those “around” me had grand adventures and success, I stayed isolated in a little garden and did what I could in between migraines, pain and paralysis.

And during these many years, I aged.

I kept playing music and recorded when I could. I had to give up performing. I blended my visual work with my sound and contemplated an identity that was birthed purely of my own process rather then relative to external mechanisms of production and commerce.

I Found It More Interesting

That’s the funny part. The life I lament losing I don’t actually want, it’s just a particularly significant challenge to create what I do want.

That’s what I am working on now. A way to build community that creates in alignment with the way I create, so that it becomes possible to live that way.

It’s a beginning and as I like to say, beginnings have power.

Matilija Canyon is farther up into the mountains along that river and that is where my parents arranged to purchase some acreage land in 1979.

My two great phobias emerged from this place… heights and snakes, which I struggle with to this day. But there were far worse things cultivated in this endeavor that also continue to define my life.

Matilija was also sanctuary to me. A sacred place where the land spoke loudly and taught me of reality. A place of clear water and air. A place of profound silence and freedom from the oppression and toxicity of society.

There were a great many forces conspiring in this occurrence. An intersection of cause and effect, of history and identity, belief and denial. An embodiment of the colonial enterprise and it’s many arms, legs, circumstances and consciousness.

This is the land I was born to. Along the ocean and in the mountains. From the marshland of Venice Beach to rivers of Matilija, the land spoke to me, told me what was there, what was buried and what was missing. The land missed it’s people, it remembered, and it told me that the truth was not in the lies the monuments were telling.

And so, from the time I was very young, I realized that everyone was lying all the time and that many did not realize that is what they were doing because they believed the lie. And that many did know what they were doing, because they were there to create and enforce the lie.

Facing the lie is extremely painful. It is intricately woven into identity, this is what makes it so effective. Attachment to identity is so powerful, that even those with good intentions will choose the attachment over liberation.

Letting go is not in any way the same as being stripped of truth by an oppressive force. Letting go is accomplished through acceptance, which is quite straightforward. It is simply being with what is here, with what is real. So it is not something that truthfully can be used to justify any position.

It is something that allows one to exist in reality and understand the truth of the condition and self, which in my experience, inherently manifests compassion. It is an intrinsic cause and effect. Like gravity.

Observing reality is something I was instructed to do one day when I was about three and some adults wanted to talk about me without me hearing and so I was left unsupervised.

I was escorted to the porch and instructed to sit there and look out into the desert. I was told not to go into it because there were snakes there, but to look at it, notice it, the bushes and the shadows, and then to share what I observed when they came back to get me.

I remember my thoughts as I sat there alone. I thought with exasperation, “These people have no idea what is going on.” I was annoyed, but took a breath and noticed the land as instructed.

The land was where Dhamma Dena - Desert Vipassana Center was founded. My parents also purchased this land in 1977, the year I was born, and transferred it to my godmother Ruth Denison for the center.

Ruth had been authorized to teach by her Burmese teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin as a result of her practice and study of Buddhism over many years with her husband Henry. They lived in a house in the Hollywood hills which was home to a salon of visionaries notable for establishing the consciousness movement in the West. Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Lama Govinda, Timothy Leary… were friends and contemporaries intent in their way to examine reality and uncover what remained mysterious to them within their conditioned experience.

This soup of influences did cause some significant confusion. So, I took it upon myself to conduct my own investigation in order to determine what was valid and observable.

These conditions have conspired within me to form a particular kind of space and I have chosen to name this space, Matilija Salon.

The intention is to cultivate consciousness and community through various applications and experiences clearly rooted in the understanding and practice of buddhadhamma.

The lived truth of impermanence and the disciplined practice of awareness aligns us with a compassionate path whose intention and purpose is the lessening of suffering. This is observable and actionable. It requires no belief, just commitment and healing.

And this awareness can be applied to and include all things, when approached sincerely with clarity and honesty.

For three years, I have held group Vipassana practice on Zoom at least once a week. It has been an incredible foundation for teaching and astonishingly transformative. Beginning as an experiment while we were still in significant pandemic based isolation, it has become the nurturing earth from which my present has grown and continues to develop.

I have held workshops and retreats focused on the nature of the creative process which explore methods of establishing conscious and healthy relationships with our process and the things we choose to create.

And I consult on worldly identities and support transformation and development within the established business practices of the current culture.

My focus is always on integrating mindful practice into daily life for everyday people.

Visit www.Attasalina.com to explore Matilija Salon, enjoy the art gallery and listen to music while you are there!

It was the third day and I was crying. I didn’t feel sad, but it was just coming out of me. And my helper visited and I was crying and she said I could come down and I said, no, I’ve got one more night and I really am ok, I really am, I am just crying and I don’t know why and I will come down in the morning.

And today, decades later I am crying and I don’t know why, but I feel it now, the pain in my chest, the grief, and I think, this is the moment.

I went to the end once and it was pure love. Terrifying at first, so I meditated and thought, “I wouldn’t want to go through this without training”.

It feels as though another threshold has passed. It’s familiar. Something I have seen before. The identities of before are moving on. They want to be seen before they go. They are my life’s work after all. This investigation. And I do feel sadness.

But the letting go is already underway and so there is no sense in clinging any longer. I understand. There is nothing to prove.

There seems to me a rather twisted relationship with suffering going on, including the glorification, denial and requirement to prove. It’s all rather suspicious, so like the under cover journalist I fancy myself, I think, there’s a story here.

It seems to have connection to the idea that reality is based upon belief.

That’s a very vulnerable position. Easily corruptible. Essentially violent.

It also keeps all the power in the position of the oppressor, and repentant or not, I find that to be tedious and absurd. The undying arrogance is no longer infuriating, it’s simply boring.

The thing is at the end of the day, it’s all about reacting to reaction. There is nothing beyond the reacting. For the manipulator is trapped and they require more people in the trap. And if one stops feeding the reaction chain, they run out of options.

The difficulty is, this is played out in families, adults abusing children, and in societies, with ruling classes abusing everyone else.

Thus…

The Glorification (they with the power to wield and witness)

The Denial (the victim is not really suffering or deserves it)

The Proof (if the victim proves their pain, then the wrong can be proved)

The pain does not require proof and the oppressed do not require the oppressors’ enlightenment.

Our liberation and our healing does nothing to change or absolve what is. We are not obligated to bear our pain like a cross and we do not have to display our suffering in the name of justice to be consumed and ultimately denied.

We do not need to hide our experience either. Choosing the manner of our sharing and helping depends upon the truth of the moment. The understanding is what is important.

I am still grieving this experience of disability and all I was attached to and why. Does it matter now? Is any of it real anymore?

Afraid to admit how I really feel, I attempt again to compartmentalize in order to exist. That can’t happen now. Not after everything. It’s another risk, it feels risky, because I was attacked so powerfully in the past for saying anything. For valuing my freedom above commerce and above fame.

It seemed like people weren’t actually there.

As soon as I crossed the invisible line, suddenly it was just like a minion was dispatched from “central” to slap me be back in line. Not sure exactly how they do that, but male musicians seem to be particularly indoctrinated.

So I am nervous even writing this right now.

Do I sound crazy? Well, the entire experience feels pretty crazy. Maybe rock n roll really just had too much power, so, what’s done is done. Not gonna let that cat out of the bag again. The revolution was flawed for sure, but it was a revolution. It upset the balance, and so, the empire strikes back.

At least I am starting to relax a little and not feel so terrible about everything I do. Just can’t take that anymore. It’s exhausting. The fear. The vigilance.

It is what it is. I surrender. And I pray.

It might be appropriate to explain myself at this point, but I am not going to.

Heart of the Beast

This is my most “successful” post I have ever had on Threads. 50,000 views and counting. I’ve never had super popular accounts, honestly, despite that supposedly being the point, a lot of engagement is nerve wracking. I’ve always been very conflicted, so, long ago I created my own personal strategy of how I used social media, since I wasn’t really in the world properly anyway.

I engaged with it as process. That’s it. I experimented. I expressed. I explored.

It’s changed a lot in the last decade, so, I don’t feel that freedom anymore. I am getting more intentional. But in that intention, I am unmasking more, not less.

I am overcoming fears and attachments and observing the general consensus on marketing and strategy and what buttons are being pushed and what narratives are unconsciously being bought into.

Just as before, I am observing, experimenting and engaging in process. I am not getting on board. I am figuring out what is happening now because I have largely not been participating in a long time. I have been in my own world.

Inviting People In

Despite my comfort with solitude, I am attempting to make friends and develop community. My past tells me this is generally a bad idea and my current efforts are a little rocky, but it must be done. I have great hope that at this time, I am in a good place to establish real connection and be in the world as I am with others who are being the same.

Propaganda uses art to sell ideology and marketing uses propaganda to sell product.

But what if we just make art and communicate?

I know, it’s a lot more complicated, but just set that aside for now.

Let’s go back to the basics.

The Sky is Blue

We are so enamored with brilliance and intellect, we become un tethered from reality quite easily. It becomes difficult to recognize simple truths. And truth gets turned into The Truth and epic quests are formed to discover, conquer and own it.

The only way to communicate honestly is to be honest. And the only way to be honest is to be totally aware.

Because, we are the minions from central. We are the unconscious program that gets triggered. We are keeping each other engaged in a conceptual reality of oppression, often under the guise of so-called freedom.

Human Being

I wanted to learn the tools to use them for my own protection. I didn’t want to walk under some one else’s symbol, I wanted my own. My own identity, my own meaning.

And I wanted to understand the mechanics of symbols and meaning and how they can be used inversely… for actual freedom.

Where this journey fits in the landscape of now, I really can’t say I know, but I have senses. Things I am drawn to do. That’s the unknown for you. It is unknown.

The more I transform the unknown to known, the more I create and allow my voice in every form, the more at peace I feel. I sense that I must establish myself. Not through systems or particular achievement, but through existence.

I must establish my reality, through form, so that I may exist.

And it must be done honestly, and I can tell when I am being tempted to stray from the path, no matter how well intention-ed or otherwise helpful that influence may be.

It’s easier to stay true.

I am so physically and psychologically burdened by false identities, it’s simply impossible for me to sustain. If my life or someone else’s is threatened then silence is a powerful protection, for the time being.

But long term silence is difficult. It’s effective. It erases. So, evidence is required. Fortification. Breadcrumbs. Language. Stories. Symbols. Infrastructure. A way to stay alive. To not be erased. To remember.

So propaganda is gaslighting. It creates reality. It changes the mind, physically. The mind is physical. It’s alive. It is conditioned by experience.

It’s a power people are very addicted to. The antibody for me is compassion. And that is a practice that requires a lot of experience. It’s a physical thing also. Not just a thought or even a system of practice.

My life is about protecting. Protecting people, protecting the process, protecting possibility.

All I have created is a message. A story I am telling myself. A story of reality. A series of breadcrumbs. A following of clues. And so I have followed the trail to now. And now is somehow different then every then before.

I am not on the trail now, not on the hunt. Not fixed like a fly on sticky paper to a path that has no exits. No off ramps. No choice that changes anything. Just dumps me back on the same road. Best just to go with it.

The Language of Supremacy

Everything must be right. Everything must be better. This language seeps into most things like a porous substance absorbing a self replicating fluid, drowning, spilling over, entombing. Insidious.

Competing narratives of supremacy only serve the ultimate force, the need to prove superiority. In this case, you can’t fight fire with fire, as you will become it.

Balance is not superior. It is not special. It is not better. It is both yielding and un-yielding. It is what is needed in reality. It recognizes that truth in summer is different then truth in winter, yet both are true.

Reality is Observable

I try to say what some things are in a clear way because I have grown up in a culture of confusion and I have found that confusion is not an accident. It is intentional. And when someone says, “hey, we don't have to be confused, this is not actually confusing, it's simple and it's liberating” and there is great opposition and attack to that, well, there is a purpose there also.

I have found great healing in silence, but being silenced is an entirely other thing.

I have been silenced by violence throughout my life. I have had many words put in my mouth that are not mine. I know my own experiences. I know myself. I am not concerned with that. I am still looking for solutions to the ongoing condition of violence. I am still participating in the unfolding of my own understanding.

This has always been my endeavor, to understand and resolve these tendencies and obsessions. So I have observed many patterns in this process. The nature of ignorance. The nature of power. The inherent trap of an authority giving another authority. The trouble with giving all your energy to something outside yourself as the embodiment of your own self hood.

This is a fundamental, psychological condition, however, it is not absolute. It requires training. Belief. Conditioning. Power requires projection of identity. No matter the story, it contains violence. How much identity are you willing to surrender for peace in every moment?

We can be right, we can be correct and I think accuracy is important but it is not always helpful. However, if we are not all willing to examine our beliefs in an honest way, there can be no accuracy. And so then we simply become a mass of imbeciles, throwing meaningless power at each other.

What is the point?

To maintain a fantasy of ownership, of identity, which as far as I can see results always in violence. So this is what it is. This pattern continually manifests and becomes quite apparent. It can be investigated and proved which is good, but it is also simply plain as day to those who see it.

There are mechanics to systems which are observable.

Belief systems are observable systems. They are not all the same. They do not all function on the same premise. Respect is not lying about what things are for a fake tolerance. Respect is acknowledging what things are and appreciating people's humanity regardless.

Calling a belief system another name because of a difference in detail is not another system. We could say it is another style. Arguing over style is an interesting choice.
People seem to spend their entire lives engaged in that. It's good for the economy. It's good for profit. You can't have profit without ownership. Who bestows the right of ownership?

The victim/oppressor dichotomy is a trap.

Change the story.

The future is now.

As artists and musicians we have plenty to do.

It takes years and years of practice and work and dedication to do what we do. I can't even imagine how to answer the question, how did/do you do what you do? I lived it, and I still live it, that's how. But I have begun to break down my way of navigating and living that does address answering the question. Because I have always done things my own way. That's a big part of how I did what I did and still do.

My way was certainly not always understood or easy or particularly popular, there was no quick reward, but there was one step leading to another. And while I worked with the opportunities that were there, I also cultivated the experiences that I wanted and adamantly avoided everything else. I prioritized my ethos and way of life. Because that's why I create in the first place. I create to establish my own reality. Not simply to conform or succeed within the dominant paradigm.

Art is life.

Because my life is what is important to me. And music and art have been my way to establish some measure of freedom and autonomy within a society that has been totally against me since day one. I am a punk artist, diy. I didn't get a degree although I did have some college education. I worked my way through and it all imploded in my 30s when I became severely disabled and chronically ill. I've been an early adopter of technology and industry changes since 2000.

I have been very successful or a complete failure depending on how one looks at it or what their measure is. What I have undoubtedly been is an iconoclast. As the culture slid more and more and more into mainstream and conservatism and the alternative spaces were overrun by money and bullshit, and the pressure to join in escalated all around... I said, No. And I've paid the price. But I am still here. And the greatest reward that I claim, is knowing myself.

I want to cultivate culture.

That's my interest, that's the point. To create possibility. To create space. To exist. To experience. To work in love. I align my practice with this first and foremost. I want to communicate more intentionally about this and have begun to, because I want to cultivate this culture within creative industries. I want to change the way we think and live. I want to foster health and agency. I want to inspire a loving way to be artists and musicians and creators of our own realities.

I want to use systems and tools to support our own vision of liberty rather than be used by them. I want to wield propaganda itself as a shield against the never-ending onslaught conformity and lies. And I have done this, and continue to.

The point is, a movement.

An identity. An alignment. A community.

So I am working on it. Creating it. And I invite you to be inspired and empowered by this idea of creative liberation in every act, large or small. In every part of life. Seen and unseen.

This is what I call... Taking the Dream. To free ourselves from rage and sorrow. To become. To come alive. All of us, soldiers of everyday. Committed to the cause of true freedom.

Challenging systems, ideologies and cultures of oppression is for me an act of healing. Healing can be a daunting task. It can not be dictated, it has to be shown up for. The healing of oneself can be a mirror for the healing of the greater condition, for we are one and the same.

We are all connected.

In honor of her memory, I am sharing this article I wrote then in support of the documentary film about her, The Silent Dance of Life by Aleksandra Kumorek.

In 1976, Ruth Denison took a trip to the high desert in Southern California. While camping near Pioneer Town, she rescued a family of baby opossums’ who were clinging to their mother who had ceased living. Compassionate to all creatures in suffering, Ruth had a very grounded view of right action and right thought. She did not stand for “bullshit” or sit with it for that matter. She was riding the waves of giants and she wanted for everyone to gain the capacity to see from this point of view.

That trip sowed the fateful seed that grew to become the Vipassana Meditation Retreat known as Dhamma Dena in Joshua Tree, Ca. Ruth Denison was among the very first western women authorized by an Asian meditation master to teach. Her mentor, U Ba Khin, had a strong inclination to bring the practice of Vipassana to the Western community. Spreading a discipline of mindfulness grounded in practicing awareness of one’s breath, body and thought as a means to access the ability to tranquilly observe one’s experience.

Ruth’s meditation teaches many things, but it particular, she taught people to understand or at least to acknowledge what they were experiencing within themselves. Rather than always looking away as our eyes are prone to do, Mindfulness is a practice of also turning the view inward. Learning to see inside as easily as we believe we see the outside.

Ruth Denison was quite a ground-breaker for women and was the first Buddhist teacher to create women’s meditation retreats back in 1980. She was working very successfully with traumatized people thirty years before trauma therapy became popularized. Forty years ago, when meditation was only sitting and walking, Ruth was combining movement, dance, music and mindful eating with the traditional model of mindfulness practice. Ruth’s innovations were not widely accepted or understood at the time, but have since become adopted by the vast majority of western Buddhist retreat centers.

Born in Germany in 1922, then Ruth Schäfer, came of age during World War II and experienced the horrors of the war first hand. In 1957, she immigrated to the United States and found herself in Los Angeles, California in the midst what was fast becoming the flower power movement. Together with her husband Henry Denison who was of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, Ruth associated with many artists, intellectuals and Buddhist teachers who were looking for new forms of expression – a “new consciousness”.

They frequently hosted luminaries in their home in the Hollywood hills, including Aldous and Laura Huxley, Alan Watts, Charlotte Selver, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Lama Govinda and Anaiis Nin among many others. After years of practicing meditation and traveling around the world to meet masters first hand, in 1971 Ruth was authorized by her teacher Burmese master U Ba Khin becoming one of the first female Buddhist teachers in the Western world – now famous for her innovative and “feminine” approach.

“You are a pioneer of Buddhism in the West!” proclaimed celebrated meditation teacher and author, Jack Kornfield. Ruth Denison has always been a colorful yet humble character. Though highly acclaimed within the community of Buddhism, she was passionate about one thing only, the Dhamma. Her last words about her life were, “I am glad that I dedicated my life to the Dhamma. It is a good life and a good way to be, I am glad that I dedicated my life to helping people.”

Ruth’s legacy remains significant around the world through the many students she has touched and she is recognized in Germany as an icon of healing and reparation.

photographs by me just before

In the words of the great Debbie Allen, “You’ve got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying … in sweat.”

For many of us, fame meant freedom. It meant the ability to transcend our class. To create our own identity and embody our truth. To succeed against all odds. At least, that’s what it meant to me.

I was “shy”. Except I wasn’t. As says… I was afraid but I couldn’t be.

So, I practiced my tricks in private. These photos are a rare glimpse into my secret life where I spun and glided like the grown up skaters I saw on the boardwalk. So confident and beautiful and strong. But I was too “shy” so I put on my skates and went next door to the parking garage of an apartment building that had the smoothest cement and I practiced with my headphones on.

I was born in that house. A funky two bedroom with the refrigerator on the back porch because the kitchen was so small. But it had a large backyard with a giant apricot tree. My brother and I could climb over the back fence and wander what was then a giant field that filled with blue flowers in spring. I could stand there and gaze out across S. Venice Blvd. to the neighborhood in the distance. I was allowed to walk as far as the convenience store on the corner of Pacific to buy treats sometimes, but not allowed to cross Pacific. I loved the beach. It’s my first memory. And we’d go to Linnie Park and play on the swing set and feed the ducks on the canal.

Ants were always a problem and had to be guarded against vigilantly else they take over. And there were morning glories. Lots and lots of morning glories. They were everywhere. Climbing the chain link fences in between the four houses that shared the lot. I had them tattooed on my arm many years later, for protection.

Venice is not Marina del Rey

…. was a popular bumper sticker once upon a time. They were trying to drain the wetland to build more condos. “I brake for ducks” was the other one. Venice was a community then. It had an identity that it adamantly proclaimed and represented.

My Venice is long gone as is my Los Angeles. I glimpsed the end of the 70’s and lived fully in the 80’s. I watched them build Malibu over the decades traveling up and down PCH going to Ojai and back. My Ojai is long gone too. As is Temescal Canyon now very literally, which was our favorite beach one summer in high school because it was often empty.

I’d “borrow” my father’s manual pick up truck and drive us there even though I didn’t have a license and had a tendency to stall in first.

My father had long since transcended his working class, Puerto Rican, hippie identity and was operating in the brave new world of 1980’s white passing lawyer and real estate investor. I felt like Jiminy Cricket and was obsessed with becoming a real person, with not getting caught in the con. I was fascinated by Pinocchio and the Velveteen Rabbit. I felt like the daughter of the yakuza and collected Elektra Assassin. I wanted to escape.

I’d inherited the Ortega teeth which made me insecure about my big smile. The Ortegas were from Cuba on my great-grandmother’s side. I know about the Ortegas because my mother has their teeth too. People said I should be a model and I wanted to act, but those teeth were a problem. I got them fixed in my late twenties which was quite the ordeal.

This is not what I had intended to write, but it makes sense. I am writing about Fear and a Facelift and this is where it comes from.

My friend wants to be herself

Says she can’t be no one else

Got herself a mirror

But she can’t really see

No reflection only misdeeds

Can you feel me?

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Best played loud.

Attā hi attanō nāthō

One’s refuge is within oneself.

Where the air is condensed
By force of movement
The fever begins

Silent of hunger
Yet devouring inside
The moment lingers eternally

Master now of wind and flame
Dead wood screams as it crackles
In the light of dying embers
A reflection is born

A manifest of destiny
Untainted by fate
The truth of an illusion
Creating still space in time

We reflect upon it’s meaning

Encouraged to look beyond the plain
To the place inside the picture
The heart beats
Certain of connection

Creation
Always creating
It is like a burning

{Photograph of the White Mountains off Hwy 395 in California. A snow covered peak is illuminated by the last rays of soft, orange light at sunset.}

On the road…

Flashback - 2004

It’s the running that kept me silent. All the dark places and reasons for things I wish I didn’t know. There exists a need to dominate, the fear of uncertainty like the necessity of a challenge. There creates the need to forget. I have been good at that until now. Narrow goals along lonesome highways propagated across my time. Convinced of needing more, I fought against my forgetting. A battle gaining strength in conflict. And for some reason, today I spoke and so stopped running.

It is so tempting to look back; to see what I’ve written; a short history of the mind and heart. Another human caught in the struggle for clarity. A clouded vision. Does it ever clear for more than an instant?

I had to move out of the city. The constant smells left me tired and frenzied; too many thoughts in one crowded place. Stories upon stories, living and dying, never breathing. Never really breathing. Today my story begins. The past is in ashes. I burned it purposefully without knowing the reason. Now I understand. The horror of myself being too much to bear. A suicide of the mind. Perhaps the body can recreate something purer, saner in its place, perhaps not.

I left the city though it has not left me. I cannot connect to the nature I once loved. My mind is filled with human creation. Culture, ideas, construction, de-construction. I feel driven to be human. To create in reflection of my era’s existence the truth of this reality that fades so quickly; the explosion in the moment of societal drama. An excursion into the heart of the buzz to extract the lifeblood or a semblance of such. The grit and grim of the moment to moment. Such heights must be vaster and more perfectly complex than the most ferocious designer drug. Would the crash be symptomatically unkind? I must be a guest for balance in the unknown.

There is a slow dawning upon the imagination, as the understood life is stripped away, that all creation is a symptom of madness. There is no truth to be remembered, only ideas that make sense. Drifting as we will, the process forever the destination, I am reminded of myself. Aware of the self I marathoned to forget, I am unsure. That is all. I am left with only questions. I think I read once that these are the answers, but what does that mean?

A man rolls a thousand miles in the name of peace and I had to get out of the city because the smells were all wrong and the mind state too manic. Looking for work was an exercise in creating personas. The most deftly executed the winner of the daily grind. All come with captivating stories to share over coffee. The best of the best can out shout an entire room of studious actors and well meaning writers. Well, maybe not so well meaning. Next season we may be so privileged to see episodes of a future land where fat is in and thin is out; won’t that be exciting.

So, now it is done. I have spoken and might now find real sleep; a sleep that revives the soul and feeds the spirit. One lacking in static dreams and confounding voices. No thoughts demanding attention, endlessly droning, meaning nothing, saying nothing that I understand. I have tired of running. My legs are sore and my will confused. Purpose unknown, night has arrived to relieve me for a spell, at the very least.

{Photograph of our Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia that we traveled in. Black and white image of a camper van with the tent top popped open, nestled in the trees in a rainy forest in Washington State near the Pacific Coast.}

Choices

Which way to turn
To the left, to the right
Straight ahead
Or burn

All these pathways
Lead the same
Fortune lost
A tortured fame

One thousand callings
To forsake this hill
These choices find me
Standing still

I made a choice that year, in 2004.

A decision which has come to define everything since. I was working as a photographer and living in Hollywood. I was also performing solo and in another band. Things were going fairly well in many ways, but for reasons I won’t go into, we decided to sell nearly all our possessions and leave LA, and we did.

A month or so later, we decided to buy a van and travel. I said, “If I am to be a photographer, as this is what is happening, then I need to really be one. I need to do some serious work. Find out who I am.”

I had not intended to work as a photographer or to make it my art. It just happened. And kept happening. So I decided to commit.

And so, we bought the van and went on the road. We were also looking. Looking for someplace to live. Looking for who we could be or might become. Looking for America. We looked and looked and looked. And then, we came back home to Ojai and began again.

Nine Years

That is how long we had been married in the fall of two thousand and four. Much longer already than anyone thought I am sure. I have always been inscrutable and so, it has been challenging to hold the line with so much doubt and opposition. But I have held, bloodied and perhaps a little compromised, but I held.

I wrote The Soldiers of Everyday and sang it to myself. And when we returned to Ojai, we parked the van at Daniel Ash’s house to visit our friend Christopher Columbus and I sang it to him. Three days later, he died. And then I sang it at his memorial.

Daniel Ash founded the band Bauhaus and is a rather famous and infamous guitarist and singer/songwriter/producer who happened to move down the street from us in 2000.

And Daniel said later while we were all hanging at his house, wouldn’t it be good to record it. And I agreed it would. So we went to the studio and recorded it.

Many years later, it became this…

And then I crashed and burned.

But not entirely before releasing Life In Suspension by The Seraphim Rising. I was hanging by a thread, very rock n roll, but I went all in again and pulled it off.

It’s those things. The things you do. Not the infinite things you didn’t do or tried to do and failed, but the ones you actually do. Those become your life.

Your precious, precious life.

So take heart and have courage, for no matter how far we come or how much we do, the next step is forever new. Forever a risk and act of faith. As we endeavor to discover the unknown and create ever more into the magnificent sunset of our imagination.

In order to create something new, we have to let go.

I have a great deal of respect for existing bodies of knowledge and their lineages. I think that is necessary. I have always operated on the premise that in order to truly know something, you must go totally into it. Experience it fully. And the only way to do this safely, is to have the capacity to remain yourself at the same time.

There is an experience that does not engage in belief or non belief, it engages in what things are. It is inherently subjective, however, it also transcends that through awareness to the degree that is possible through our sensory lens of perception.

I was set on my path from the beginning and circumstances coincided. I was trained in meditation and martial arts as a child, I was embraced by Native community reclaiming ceremony as a teenager. I have practiced seriously for a long time. I have investigated. Considered the contrasts. I was intent on understanding what everything was all about; what it was, what it wasn’t, why it worked, how it worked and how it did not.

This investigation has revealed a large intersection of cause and effect. I certainly do not claim to know everything, but I know what I know and it contains the many forces at play in our human condition today.

It is knowledge won by bearing witness, by immersion, by painful and arduous experience and also by committing to the long game of life and never giving up on what I know to be true and real and love.

There are many threads and times and memories and histories, and how to communicate it all, I do not know, but I am endeavoring to begin now. What is most compelling is not my own story, but the story of how everyone can find their path of healing and transformation with greater ease without sacrificing the necessary substance.

The time is now to change the way we are. This learned condition of suffering. While it arises from the tendencies of humans by the nature of our embodiment, it is not necessary or determined.

In order to let go, it is necessary to understand. And understanding is not that difficult. Things have been obscured through the centuries in order to control or be hidden from control.

The main difficulty lies in attachment to the behaviors and beliefs driving us that we are largely unconscious of. They can exert tremendous sensory power over our experience of life which keeps us stuck in a cycle of pain and perpetuation of pain.

In order to create something new, we have to actually want it. Not just the idea of it or the same thing wrapped in a shiny new package. We have to want to be different and to put our energy in that direction. It’s very difficult to have one foot on the train and one foot on the station. If you really want to take the ride, you must let go, get on board and commit fully to being where you are.

It cannot be done with a mental trick. It’s a physical change. A way of life.

The Story

We are governed largely by mental forces. By the way we conceptualize our existence. By stories. These stories become our sense of who we are and define what we do.

We know that stories are extremely powerful, because people seeking power, gain it through story. It may be a story backed up by force, but force alone cannot assimilate a people, only story does that. Story has the power of destruction and creation. Story has the power of millennia.

Over time, our sense of identity becomes indistinguishable from the story we occupy. So in order to change the story, we must distinguish it. We must make it observable so that we can see it for what it is. In this way, we become able to release our attachment to identity.

The Unknown

We exist within a series of expectations, many of which are correct; many of which are correct because we create the condition for their correctness. A self fulfilling prophesy. As creative beings, we have a strong tendency for those.

We create goals based upon these expectations which arise from a story.

Breaking even a little bit from these embedded expectations can yield remarkable results. Whether you will be pleased with the results is another matter, however, if our intention is to change our condition, then we must look to as yet undefined goals and create non existent maps to the unknown territories we wish to occupy.

In this quest for the unknown, we can find ourselves re creating the very conditions we endeavored to change because we ourselves were not willing or able to first undergo the transformation.

Conscious Creating

Navigating the creative identity is a fascinating phenomenon. I have been engaged with this my entire life and professionally for twenty-five years. It’s an intersection of self, business and freedom. There are a plethora of skills involved, especially if one works in multiple disciplines. What I have learned running creative, independent businesses for decades is, business is business. It is what it is. And it's very easy to build a business you don't actually want.

The real trick is creating something that is authentic, healthy and sustainable in this socio economic reality. This is the task I have been engaged with. It requires commitment and dedication, but it's the only way I can see that real change becomes possible.

The path of conscious creating is the path of liberation from established systems and preconceptions.

This practice challenges the boundaries of being a creative human in any discipline on the physical, mental, emotional and environmental platforms.

It asks the questions... Who are you, what are you doing and why?

And it answers with a process of discovery and transformation grounded in the nature of reality. This is not for the feint of heart, it is for passionate people who are intensely engaged and wish to confront limitations and oppressive conditions.

I am preparing a new workshop called Death + Creation which applies impermanence and non attachment principles and practice to the development of creative work.

Sometimes, you need a new perspective in order to create new systems. 🗝

Discover the transformative affect of being where you are…

The Power of Process

I am a survivor. I know suffering intimately. It has defined my life, my existence, but not me. I have always been here. I have always remained, present within the tornado.

Hurled upon the winds of pain and anger and grief and loss and imprisonment, I have waited and I have observed.

The nature of suffering is precise. Measurable. It can be used meticulously and brutally in order to control. That's it. Strange that the complex tapestry of human suffering can be contained in such simplicity.

The complexity is where the challenge becomes great, immense really. Stretching out in all directions through the ages, generations and generations of lives and memories and emotions. Vast oceans of sadness and loss. The great limitation of a single embodied experience of time.

And yet, through this limitation, we contain the capacity to experience the limitlessness of existence. To understand love and identity. And freedom.

To be present to ourselves and each other. So simple, so elusive, so absolutely true. And so truly, it becomes the only power that can stand before suffering incorrupted.

The Transformative Effect of Being Where You Are

To survive chronic pain and fatigue, rest is a strategy of survival. Knowing how to rest effectively is the difference between life and death. Rest may actually be the truest form of love or compassion.

I grew up with meditation. My godmother said I was born to it. I practiced it, utilized it, was empowered and protected by it, I observed. It wasn’t until much later that I realized what it truly is when it becomes necessary. When there is no longer a future fantasy to escape to. When the only refuge is here and now.

Like Siddhartha choosing to sit until liberation came, I had no more games to play. It was this or nothing. I leaned deeply into my practice in solitude with little witness. In my secret garden sanctuary, behind an unassuming fence on an ordinary street in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary American town, I surrendered the world and myself.

Changing the Survival Mechanisms of Consciousness and Leaning into the Unknown

Everything about your life so far has probably been about surviving in a certain society. We are trained to function within the culture we are in and given the tools that relate to that culture. So we are conditioned through life experience to behave certain ways for certain reasons.

We are wired for survival. This is what our bodies are designed for. I include the mind in the body, they are one whole being. We detect reality through our senses and process this information into complex experiences which we call life.

Over time, this becomes our conditioned state of being and we react to life from this state and then, we carry a belief that this identity is permanent. This idea of our conditioned identity as our self. And while it certainly is oneself and one’s lived experience, it isn’t entirely permanent and it isn’t entirely us.

It can be persistent and sometimes difficult to transform, however, our conditioned experience remains nonetheless, impermanent. Which means we do possess the capacity for agency in relationship with one’s sense of self and we can create space within our consciousness for this impermanence.

The Illusion of Absolute Constraints

In life, on the ground, it can get very intense. Things happen quickly and our reactions are almost immediate, relying on years of habit and experience. This is a good thing. This helps us survive. But this can also become a trap. Keeping us stuck in repeating patterns of thought, emotion and behavior.

Despite all our strategies, we experience less freedom and happiness than is possible. We bring survival mechanisms even into spiritual practice and we are largely unconscious of this. We don’t realize that we have the capacity to be aware of it.

While everything we experience is dependent upon the condition we are in, with awareness, we can see what ability we have to influence our situation. We can have greater clarity on when to act or when to not act, when to speak or when to embrace silence.

Life happens in the present moment, so the more we practice and develop our skill in awareness, the more we can trust and listen to our instincts as things are actually happening.

Deeper Understanding of Practice

There exists a way to navigate your life and your present experience skillfully that leads you essentially to freedom and happiness.

This process allows you to gain insight and wisdom on the way you're navigating things that you might not see otherwise, and these insights can help you change things in your life that you didn't realize that you had the capacity to change.

Meditation practice is extremely active, but it is usually accomplished by being very physically still. It's confusing because we are used to the idea that if we're doing something that means we're physically active or mentally active.

There is a much deeper rest than sleep. There is a much deeper awareness than awake.

Rest is the difference between life and death. We must sleep to survive. It is necessary. The current society I occupy in the United States of America in 2024 has greatly minimized the needs of body and mind. In an effort to transcend it’s humanity in the name of progress, it has created a grotesque ideal, like the Dr. Frankenstein, it has distorted it’s view of life and happiness in the name of attachment and suffering.

Through practice, one can train one’s attention to a balanced state of being. It can be challenging, but it is not difficult. It just takes practice. Like riding a bicycle or playing the piano. Over time, with dedication, it simply becomes natural. Let’s face it. Healing should be easier. It truly does not need to be so difficult.

The Nature of Change

Life happens in the present moment, it doesn't happen abstractly or conceptually.

In order to develop the agency that we have within our own lives to do things differently, we must become different. We must be different.

We must give ourselves the space to truly exist. This is something we must actively do. It does not occur by thinking about it. It happens by being it. Transformation occurs through the conscious observation of the present reality. This is how we each become our own authority, with harmony and balance, because only we can truly know ourselves.

As a fellow traveler on this path, I have observed and considered many things. I dwell within the ongoing nature of practice. Dhamma is process, that is life.

When we are able to accept everything. All of our life, all of reality, as it is, simply accepting, not judging, not holding on, allowing all of our thoughts and feelings to just be what they are, with gentleness and compassion, we open the door to liberation. Then all we must do, is walk through it.

My work is inspired by my investigations into the buddhadhamma (teaching of the Buddha). I undertook this journey as a result of the conditions of my birth.

I decided the only possible way to know what anything is, is to find out for myself, not to take anyone’s word for it, including the Buddha. Funny thing is, that is literally the buddhadhamma. I am sure my godmother appreciates the irony.

I am named for a book composed by Buddhaghosa in the Theravada Abhidhamma tradition. The title has been translated as "Providing the Meaning". In the Atthasālinī, Buddhaghosa explains the meaning of terms that occur in the Dhammasangani which is part of the Abhidhamma Pitaka. The Abhidhamma Piṭaka is a detailed scholastic analysis and summary of the Buddha's teachings in the Suttas. 

In popular western culture, it seems little known how scholastic and detailed the buddhadhamma is. I have never been comfortable sharing my background due to the prevalence of cult mentality and misrepresentation of the practice. People in American culture seem to want to either put you on a pedestal or disqualify you in some way.

I have no interest in either. I am simply interested in an accurate view of reality and myself. My work deals with my investigation into myself and reality, it documents the lifelong journey I have undertaken to see things as they are and I have seen many things.

Investigating the meaning of this story and sensation, my life floods in. Moments near and far. Things I haven’t thought of in a very long time. Things I set aside as I simply could no longer spend time and energy on them.

And there is a theme. There is an identity. I am tired of being treated like a thing.

I am tired of being used. I am tired of being disrespected. I am tired of being abused.

All my life, people have treated me like absolute shit. Raised in the cultish communities that arose as a result of the Theosophical Society, that particular flavour of white supremacist patriarchy is vicious and insidious. It denies itself. It gaslights and it abuses.

It is difficult to come to terms with. It is the life I have led. The good, the bad and the ugly. I have spent considerable time sorting through it. Examining and testing. Finding out if anything is real.

Ojai is ground zero. Hollywood, it’s playground.

It’s all a trap. The religious right; the orthodox, one God oppressors, proudly proclaim their intentions to continue their thousand year mission of ultimate dominion. The alternative; appearing to be the antithesis, they attract seekers, those wishing to free themselves, but in their own deluded state, uphold and recreate the very systems it claims to challenge and resolve.

Ultimately, whether there is one god, many gods or no god at all, the narrative of oppression remains consistent. Violence, slavery, supremacy, manipulation. It requires expert vigilance and an almost annihilating level of honesty to maintain clarity. It requires everything.

I exist today in honor of generations who made my existence possible. Every single act of resistance. Across space and time. It’s all here now. It’s all we have.

It’s all I have.

I can’t say I chose this path, it just is. It’s always been. But I choose it now because I must. There is nothing else. I cannot lie because I know. I see. I have seen.

This is what I have to offer. It’s nothing fancy. It can be difficult and painful. But I have seen where the other road leads over and over and it’s nowhere. It goes nowhere. And to witness the grief of the dying is to see this and know this.

So I put my trust in the process. The process is all there is. To be present in this day and this time and be what is. It is my freedom for which I am in great appreciation. It comes with sacrifice but that is life.

I’m starting to look like the person I saw long ago.

I am feeling like my young self. Not that I feel young. But I am reconnecting with that in a tangible way. In general, people did not understand me. I began hiding around 18. It was too painful being in conflict all the time. Being constantly told to be someone else. So, I pretended to be someone else. People would think I was cool, want to hang out, then get a glimpse of my reality and not be able to handle it. My godmother told me it would be this way. She had a place for me.

I could have gone to live in the desert and become a Dhamma teacher from the beginning. But I knew I could not. I couldn't explain it. There were very real dangers I was attempting to navigate. I have been returning more and more to the truth of myself. Dropping pretense and remembering what I tried to escape. I understand the labyrinths of deception. The difficulty in finding the path out of suffering. I offer no trite formulas for success. Only the truth of liberation.

I don't expect people to understand or believe. It's not about me. Compassion is like the oceans of this planet. Deep and vast. Hot and cold. Clear and murky. Compassion is everything. Ego is simplistic, Dhamma is simple. It is just a name for the way things are.

I have seen things. Many things. Mostly it hasn’t seemed particularly useful. Not in this societal construct I find myself in. If you judge someone based solely on numbers in their bank account, which we do far more than people wish to admit, then you are missing a lot.

Equating financial status with spiritual blessing has absolutely zero basis in fact. It’s just classism. That is all. It’s a value judgement. Those with more are better with no examination of how they got more. It’s quite ingrained in the mass consciousness. It is simply not objectively true.

Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. At a certain point, judging good or bad becomes meaningless. It’s a relative view. Honestly observing what is actually happening is an entirely different thing. Observing without judgement does not mean that we do not have any understanding of what is happening, it means we have more. We are not engaging with simplistic dichotomies, we are taking in a more complete picture of reality and assessing people’s behavior relative to that.

In this way, compassion and justice become possible.

Truth requires a willingness to let go of a lot. Mostly people are not prepared to do this because their sense of identity is based on the condition. Realizing the condition is unreal means realizing the identity is unreal and honestly, this can be a terrifying experience. This is what the practice is for. When you become adept at experiencing things in a less extreme and reactive way, you become capable of handling your own transformation. Otherwise, it will just be too brutal.

To see clearly requires a lot of gentleness and compassion. Not ideologically or even morally, it’s just the way it is. Without it, it’s simply impossible to get past the suffering.

I have had many visions. I have spent many decades observing. Keeping an open mind. Seeing what happened. I didn’t necessarily assume anything. Didn’t decide anything. Just noticed.

It is up to us to do things differently. I know that’s a lot, but it is true. People want an external authority to tell them what to do. It sounds great. Someone has the answer and I do what they tell me and it will work out and if it doesn’t then I can blame them also. Many people actually call this freedom. I think this is marketing not actual meaning.

Everyone is justified, everyone is a victim.

The victim/oppressor dichotomy is very real, it is also a trap. The only way out is to see the condition of it and walk away. Do something different. Be something different. Any way you can. That’s it. That’s all we have. And as pathetic and hopeless as that may seem, it is actually monstrously powerful which is why it is so imperative to respect it. The humble path. It is the only way out of violence. And it is not simplistic.

I have seen that post pandemic will be a kind of suffering that is beyond what many have become accustomed to. As the condition becomes more and more unstable, the unreality of man made illusion becomes more difficult to ignore. People have not been taught how to deal with this because education has largely been convincing people of it’s realness and that success is dependent upon that belief.

It is exceedingly easy to get very lost, very quickly.

This “nothing is real” sensation can become a sickness and the cure that people look for is another illusion of certainty. Something is real, it’s just that determining what that is can be a challenge.

I am not looking for praise or blame. I am not interested in being right, I am interested in being true. Now, truth is a loaded word. I hesitate to use it at all, and yet not to use it would be a lie. Truth is knowable, but it takes effort and you do have to find it for yourself. That is not to say that other people cannot help in that en-devour. We all have our own truth, it is our actual lived experience.

There is no singular truth, there is just being true. And true is everything. It is the totality of existence. It’s the truth and the lie and being able to see it for what it is.

So, this is my best attempt to say some things today. I will keep attempting to write down what I know, what I have seen and experienced and why I understand it the way that I do.

I have seen my future. Much of it has already happened so, I accept the likelihood that the rest will follow. It is easier for me that way than to pretend otherwise. If it doesn’t happen, then that is just as well.

I have seen who I become and what I will do. I have seen that people will be in great suffering, but I have also seen that they will find their way out.

Driven by a childhood vision in black and white, these works incorporate film photographs printed with toner on washi over layers of varied papers, paints and acrylic mediums creating window like portals in the fabric of spacetime.

Past and future intersect in this examination of time and consciousness through the juxtaposition of accurate visions of the future with traumatic memory loss of lived experiences.

This work documents my investigation into the nature of reality as it interrogates personal and historical narratives of survival, land and identity.

Truth is in the Land

I’ve traveled the back roads and captured the moments that speak. The land has it's own story. Buried in the lines and cracks, trickling down the waterways and through the skies. The story of time and the nature of being.

The ancestors spoke when I was young. They told me what was here, what was real and what was needed. They showed me the future and whispered of the past. This land remembers, it has a voice and it wants to be heard.

“Truth is in the land,” the voice said. Stories are written and spoken, but I needed to know. Surrendering to intuition and forsaking the known, I observed in the world around me the path I was destined to take. Relating patterns, unfolding perceptions, traveling this naked reality in pursuit of understanding.

Four Corners

Over thirty years ago, I had a vision. I told no one until now.

It wasn’t the first or the last, but it was the only vision of such acute intensity and specificity. It told me of the future and now that future is happening.

“When will I be free?” I called out silently to the mountain from the truest desperation within my heart, “When will everything be free?”. The answer came like a shock wave nearly knocking me to the ground.

My sight went dark and the voice began speaking. “Many people will die.” Disoriented and nearly passing out from the immense force I felt pressing down on me, with great effort and focus, I managed to remain standing. “These people will die,” the voice said as I walked away from the monument as quickly and normally as possible. Afraid of interruption and questions if anyone should notice my condition, I made my way to the parking lot. I found a reasonable spot to hide, crouched down and listened to the voice while seeing what was being shown.

Muhu Tasen

I’ve had trouble with memory. There were parts of my mind I couldn’t access and years of my life I could not recall. “Someday you will photograph your experience,” the voice said. These photographs are symbols. Field notes. Mnemonic devices for a map of the knowledge I was searching for and a method of restoring my mind. Everything is connected and everything had to be tested.

“Like this bowl of water,” the elder said, “your vision is clear.” This work is a document of the past and threshold to the future. It is evidence. Something to leave behind. I have had to be honest though I didn't want to. “I think you are born to it,” my godmother said looking out the window as we went into our meditation.

Everything is Vipassana.

Dhamma Dena

The consequence of oppression and abuse are the same on an individual level as on the societal and the environmental. The dominator’s control over powerlessness, erasure of identity, attack on memory and silencing of speech and thought by physical, emotional and psychological pain and manipulation result in severe, traumatic injury of mind, body and soul. This traumatized relationship with ourselves is reflected in our conception and our treatment of the earth and all that is a part of it.

Through understanding the process of erasure and finding ways to experience peace and awareness, rather than fear and distortion, I learn to stay present in a life that has been under constant threat and attack. Photographing in a practice of non-attachment, the forms reveal the hidden truths of my journey. Healing occurs of absolute necessity. Creating space for where one is without trying to change the experience is essential to a true traveler's journey through suffering.

"And they who have considered all the contrasts on this earth, and is no more disturbed by anything whatever in the world, the Peaceful One, freed from rage, from sorrow, and from longing, they have passed beyond birth and decay."

~ Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

Freed From Rage and Sorrow

“Truth is a pathless land…”

Jiddu Krishanmurti plays a significant role in my life and creative practice, between which there is little separation. When I was a baby, my parents began attending the Krishnamurti talks at the Oak Grove in Meiners Oaks in the Ojai Valley. We lived in Venice in the house I was born in near the boardwalk and we would drive up PCH and up the mountain to hear him speak. It is some of my earliest memories, the Oak Grove, the gathering, his voice that I only heard from a distance and my best friend, Francesca.

This led to my parents acquiring land in the national forest by partnering with Francesca’s parents and so, we lived off grid in the wilderness under the vivid stars in the clear air, drinking fresh water from a spring up the hill. The land was my teacher and my protector, and I adhered always to the pathless path as I traveled through it and my life.

Damaged in Processing

Practice is quite integral to such a journey. There are resources and skills that make such an undertaking possible and probable. While we must accept the value of the unknown, we can also practice knowing. The middle way is a dance between opposites which do not have to be in opposition. It is the nature of balance, growth and change. Things are not fixed, however, they are real and we can observe and reveal understanding of that reality.

In this way, suffering (dukkha), often presenting as the chronic habits of traumatized selves manifesting as identity, has opportunity for resolution continually rising in the present moment.

Dhamma Centered Creating

I’ve never been a fan of the tortured artist trope. The artist as victim. It did not align with the Dhamma teaching and practice of lessening suffering. Suffering is a part of life, this is inherent, this is what the four truths acknowledge, but the eight fold path gives us a framework for agency within this condition and opportunities for liberation and compassion and freedom which I was entirely intent upon integrating and implementing in my life and creative practice.

My expressions of “suffering” are my expressions of truth, experience, healing, transformation and compassion. Rising to what is real, accepting and releasing with patience.

Freedom

Is possible. It is turning from a dependent relationship with violence to a way of peace rooted in truth. It is a journey each person must take for themselves as an ever unfolding experience of what is actually here.

It is extremely helpful to work with others who are also practicing, so I have begun to form a community. For me, there is no separation between the spiritual and the material and the Dhamma demonstrates this in practice. I was trained in the Vipassana tradition which brings mindfulness into daily application in every moment, every action.

To intentionally apply Vipassana techniques to one’s creative process, in my experience, is to invite freedom, through healing, into your life, your work, your relationships and your creative expression.

Dhamma Road

Emerging from my own lived experience of illness and recovery in relationship with creativity, this practice is the way I do my work and the way I live my life. It is the methodology for my self development and agency within my journey. It is everything.

After teaching students to develop their meditation practice, it is emerging that the next step is in application. As my students are also artists and creators who are applying their practice to their work, it makes sense to intentionally create space and augmented support for these endeavors.

I invite all artists and creatives to this path at any stage of process, career and meditation experience.

Matilija Salon

Teetering on the edge of oblivion, the black mask of reality torn asunder. Memories return. Afterlife images, meaningless surrender.

I was not tired when I heard the word whispered in my ear that night. Grey and dreary, starlight reflections on the wet asphalt. Colorless. Apart somehow, unreal. They told me to go home, now.

So I did, listening to my footsteps echo on the empty street. Urban homesteads with stoops for faces. Cold, lonely. I’d dreamt this before, I thought, long ago. Like a million years by the dream clock. So much undone, so much recounted. What on earth did it all mean?

Too late to question now. The man behind the counter said, “Go slow, take it real easy. This ain’t like anything you have ever had before.” So I did. I walked slow, I thought slow. Hands in pockets, hunched against the cool mist rain wondering, what have I done?

Ten minutes before, back at the bar. Hustlers, lovers, players and freaks. Night dwellers looking for something, don’t know what. The saxophone player meandering elegantly up and down the scales, breathing some heartfelt clarity into his somber notes.

I sipped my drink, absent mindedly tracing the faux wood grain table with my middle finger. Tapping the foot occasionally in expectation. “You have never had this before,” said the guru. So I smiled and gave a slight nod and agreed to meet him at the shiva shack at 12:30, second table from the bar. Dark corner, alone.

—

The word, echoing in the chamber of my ear. Ringing softly, spellbinding and gently wrapping it’s sonic tendrils round my mind. Deeper and deeper, spiraling, gently, so very gently into my inner sanctum. Below the conscious thoughts, beyond the electrical impulses, into the chemical complexes, making and unmaking.

Through a river of black current. Washing nakedly upon the beaches of insanity. Standing up, looking around. Breathing deeply, smelling nothing.

Footsteps echo. Oh, that is me. Still strolling down the street. Hands in pockets, hunched against the rain. Only the rain is gone now. The streets still dark and shiny. Almost home.

“What a world, what a world,” said he. The guru, as was his moniker, sat across me at the table, sipping from his cold, iced drink. “It is never quite what you want it to be. First it is this, then it is that. Whatever choice you take, you will always end up back at the beginning.”

Back at the beginning, back at the beginning. What was that sound? What was it he said to me just then? Was it a word or something more? Damn! I must remember to write these things down. But I wasn’t sure that it could be written. Was that possible, a word that could not be written? And what did it sound like? I could not remember.

So, then it was done. The guru leaned, gently again, across the table. A silent movement, like a ghost or a dream. All was still and quiet. The air hovered expectantly and the guru’s lips parted almost imperceptibly and whispered.

—

Go home. Yes, I remember that. It was just before. Just before, go home. The dreaded emptiness. Was that what he said? A word that means emptiness, that is emptiness itself. Non-existence, absence, something that is nothing. Yikes.

And on and on, into the spiral. Faces, stories, words, shouting, singing, slaying, competing, loving. No wait. Was it loving? Sights, sounds, feelings, smells. Objects of desire. Odd that I wanted that. Shit. Color me impressed, color me stupid, color me, oh, I don’t give a damn.

At the front stoop. My homestead grinning down at me, daring me to enter. Go home. Alright alright! Keys exited my pocket, entering the hole like a demon’s shadow in the darkness. The door swung open, suddenly and with great force as if to signal that this dream was coming to an end. I stood upon the threshold, my mind racing yet calm and undivided. The stairway extended in front of me. Straight up and then to the left as it wound to the second story.

I gathered my strength and took the first step. The sound wound deeper. I took another step, the vibration spread deeper still. A quick breath and then I mounted the stairs, steeling myself against the ever deepening word and continued without further hesitation to the second floor landing.

Unimpressed, I thought. So what. I made it up the bloody stairs. Disgusting. That was odd. Another flight to go. Go home remember, go home. So, round the bend, up the next flight. Zippity doo, no trouble at all. Hey! I went down into a fetal on the third floor landing as the sound wound round what seemed an impossibly deep crevasse inside my tiny, tiny head. How is there even that much space in there? It’s like the bleeding universe.

—

“What matters,” the guru mused thoughtfully, “is that you take my advice. Do not hesitate. Do not rethink your mistake. Simply keep moving forward. Into the darkness. Into the void. Follow the sound. Don’t get lost in your own self deception. The world wants you to fail. It intends for this to happen. If you want to get to the other side of this, then you must play a different game altogether. The game begins, now off you go.”

The sax player decided it was time for a break. The guru’s ice was lonely in his glass. The shack was suddenly very quiet and very empty. The smell of sweet smoke, faint and omnidirectional. The quiet hum, inside. I left the table and headed for the door. “You’ve never had this before.”

Street lights, yes. Rain, yes. Homestead, yes. Right, back on the third floor landing and holy hell, what was that?! Follow the sound, alright. The sound wanted me to go forward. Crawling on hands and knees down the hall. Hell, if anyone could see this, well, they’d just think I was pissing drunk as usual I suppose. “You’ve never had this.” Nope, I certainly never had.

Eyes closed. Feeling in the dark. It was easier this way. Should be coming up on my exit very soon. My door was the fourth down on the right. Passing Mrs. Suzie’s place, that was the second. And there was the third, not sure who lived there actually. Alright, here we are. Eyes still closed. This must be the one. Fumbling for my keys a second time, the metal in the lock, handle turning. Click. And the sound stopped.

I was in the door. Alone in my mind. No thought, no sound, no smell. Closing the door slowly, I opened my eyes and found that I was standing in my apartment but I did not recognize anything. There were shapes and shadows, spaces and occupied spaces. But they had no name. No indication of actually being there.

I moved through the space that I occupied into another space that then became the space that I was now occupying. I turned to look where I had been but it looked the same to me as where I was or rather where I am now. Since moving about seemed rather useless, I chose to sit down and close my eyes again.

There was that sound. Faint again like before but seeming to echo from within the very deepest space between my ears. So vast, so infinitely vast and empty and dark, this space. The sound reverberating over and over, exactly the same in this deep dark space. And then I could see it. I could see the sound inside my mind as if lit from within, pulsing and sounding and staying the same. And drawing me deeper, following the sound, playing the game.

—

Ice clinked. I heard the sound. And suddenly the saxophone came to life and all the flurry and activity of the shack swung about my head in an array of color. Reds and yellows washing about the place. Streaking in frenzied, vibrant strokes across the horizon of my perspective. I stared straight ahead, unable to move. The moment like infinity, the sound like some kind of horror.

The man, looking at me, somewhat amused. Crooked smile but kind eyes. Who was this guy? Why had I agreed to meet him? ‘Cause he had something, he said. Something I wanted but didn’t know I wanted. Well, hard to say no to that. Hard to say no to something interesting, something unusual arriving unexpectedly in the midst of an utterly predictable reality.

Utterly predictable, that was it really wasn’t it. This was the absence of predictability. This was a road map if you will to another dimension where bits and pieces move about as if removed from the laws of substance. Where in order to see you must not see. Where in order to know, you must not know.

The sound continued. The sound of the word. The sight of the sound. The darkness and the space and the space that was occupied. I opened my eyes.

Love and the Creative Process

There is a kind of discipline that is not the result of external punishment or control. I say this because I feel that the way I undertake my life is quite disciplined and people sometimes seem to find that excessive or dislike the term or completely misinterpret my behavior. Personally, I find it truly difficult, perhaps impossible to accomplish creative tasks without it. For many reasons, I do not have what I call, the privilege of chaos. I must plan, I must choose and I must accept.

This is not to say that everything is entirely ordered all the time. There is quite a bit of going with the flow. But I would say my disciplined approach creates a balanced relationship with that flow which allows for things to move forward. Like a running stream.

Karma means action. It is what we do. What we do is largely a result of our state of mind relative to the condition. Forces outside our control will always be in affect. I do not subscribe to imagining that reality doesn’t exist. I do experience that there is some relativity to our relationship with reality. And that is where focus can make a significant difference.

Love is action. While we experience the emotion of love, the expression is in actions. In how we treat ourselves and others. In how we respect or disrespect life itself.

What is Mindfulness?

It’s become a common term these days in the United States. In the western education system, the impression I got is, if you know the word exists and can state the definition, people think you know what it is.

This is not so in the Buddhist system. The information is part of understanding but it is only meaningful in actual practice and lived experience. To really know something, you basically have to prove it. Talking like you know is very limited “proof”.

Mindfulness is not an idea, it is a practice. So, to understand mindfulness, you have to practice it. Telling people to be mindful is a good reminder, but it is not very meaningful if there is no action. Mindfulness is the result of action not thought.

Be Yourself

I went looking for another life. I thought maybe I could have one. Why not, right? Go somewhere, do something, meet people, be whoever I chose to be. Well. There are limits to that. And the thing is, no one I could imagine being is actually as interesting as who I actually am.

My life has been quite challenging and quite painful. I needed to chart my own path and I did. But now as things have happened I see that I cannot be any other than who I actually am, which is largely what has actually happened. And here we are again, action. Karma.

It’s quite determinate.

So we are what we do. I don’t mean a title. I mean the collective action of our entire lives. The parents and community we are born to, our childhood, all our experiences which can include professional identities but not at all exclusive to that. All of this is who we are. There is no getting away from that.

But there is going very deeply into that. So deeply into yourself, into who you are, that you find that while you are all of this action, you are what you do, there is a state of being that is where all this doing begins. And with a certain kind of discipline, some might even call it self respect, this state of being can be cultivated and developed. And so even though all your Karma still exists, your relationship with it, your relationship with yourself, changes.

PS I teach a meditation class called Dhamma Road

In order to not stay stuck in the past or continually replay unhelpful patterns, it is necessary to understand it. To take an honest account. We often prefer to craft a desirable narrative about events, edit things to suit a story about ourselves that we prefer over the truth. Then we perform that story for the world.

No matter how convincing it may seem, or how attached we are to it, my experience is a false narrative will get you in the end. Because a lie, no matter how desirable, is still a lie, it is covering up the truth. And if the truth is horrible, the lie is only perpetuating the horror. Only the truth will set us free.

We bare our souls as artists in so many ways. That doesn’t mean we are entirely honest. Often far from it. As a photographer, I am particularly focused on reality. On what is happening, what has happened and what is to come. On recording a true event, a phenomenon. As a songwriter and musician, I am also telling true stories, recording events, transforming lived emotion into sound. They are both performance in their way, but I find I am not drawn to stage craft. I seem to prefer the elegance of raw, unscripted beauty. A mountain or desert creature. Not urbane and yet ferociously sophisticate.

So now, for me, the idea of liberation is not that I will ever get away from myself or my past. I know I will not. It is instead that by going so dangerously and deeply into the truth of my life that I will transform it into the will to be absolutely free. And in that place of freedom, find the love to create in total honesty.

I am very excited that I am photographing portraits on 4x5 again. It is truly a practice of love. Every detail is utterly fascinating to me.

I have told this story in order to go forward. I have some exciting projects on the horizon that I will be sharing soon. I wish you and yours the very best and thank you for connecting with me here as this journey of life continues unabated into 2022.