Hi. I’m Foxy. I use this name because of the creature, the animal that is rarely seen, and if then, only by searching, watchful eyes. In the first flash of morning light and the last shadow before the dark falls, if you look just right, you might see the swish of the fox’s big, bushy tail entering into the woods. Otherwise, she walks in living camouflage, blending into her surroundings, remaining unknown until it serves her.
The fox is also sexual energy, her tail represents the rise of the kundalini, her big backside sways back and forth, back and forth, acting as a lead, reminding us of our sexual prowess and awakenings in every moment.
When I was a little girl, five or so, my big sister found me a tiny blue t-shirt at a shop in a popular and progressive beach town. This was circa 1978 or so. The shirt had a sparkly iron-on that said Foxy Mama. I guess way back then I was calling out to the Universe. Fox is my medicine. Mama is my service.
Not in any particular order, I am: A mother. A writer. A lover. A dancer. I follow the spiral path of the wise women tradition in a very modern world. I am a country girl with one foot always in the city and I will always live between the two. I really like to eat and fuck. I love to pray and fast. Marijuana, vodka mixed with chunks of watermelon, pranayama and native drumming keep me balanced and relaxed. I am a mover, and explorer. My family comes from a long line of nomads, traveling musicians and healers, and we honor that tradition, finding home wherever our hearts are.
I have a partner in domesticity and you’ll know him as Rocker. I have three daughters. Little Moon, Little Bear and Little Bird. I am always in love with them, they are my pure passion, my greatest gifts and creations, the most powerful teachers. But I spend a good amount of time running away from them, looking for a hiding space so I can morph out of The Role and just unfurl into Me. I find myself here, in this place, comfortable unfurling my wings and settling in my momentary newness. I hope somehow through me, through all of us, you will take that time to find the You, too.
~~~
I met my sirens in three different states in a span of three years. I met the empress when my life was easy and carefree, she came walking out of the sunshine and we formed friendship in celebration. Lila came to me just as everything was beginning to shift; a new person began growing in my womb and I would be leaving my home, traveling new lands again. She witnessed this, reached out to me, told me she was there. I met Noa and Zita after everything had fallen totally apart and all together , all five of them, came to me, to watch me lay on the ground in a heap of broken bones. Each Siren has reached out a hand as I begin to stand back up.
~~~
There is a dark force within all of us, a place where shadow mother lives and she longs so be heard. I was suffering Post Partum Depression in the form of Rage. I assumed that nobody wanted to hear about it, about how each day I wanted to be anything but a mother to my children. Nobody wanted to hear about how I wanted to throw my husband out on his ass or stick my foot in his face for leaving dirty socks on the floor. Nobody wanted to hear about the journey I was taking with the ugly face, the wrinkled old face, the fire breathing dragon face. It was scary. Even I wasn't sure if I could hear it myself.
But then I heard a chorus, a sweet song from the sea sing: We’ll listen.
And so I began to write, in a different way, nothing held back, nothing at all. Suddenly my heart and my words grew up and I became closer to Whole. I did not have to be what the rest of the world wanted me to be. I could be the volcano exploding with hot lava. I could be ragged and torn apart at the seams. I could be the tsunami. I could be a bratty princess and a spoiled bitch. I could be holy than thou and barely holy.
And of course that is not all. I could celebrate with these words as I journeyed back up, into the open sky again, because once we descend, if we are held by love, we will also ascend. And I could talk about the apple blossoms and the pies I made and the golden curls that fall along my daughter's shoulders and how perfect Rocker and Little Moon and Little Bear and Little Bird and I all fit together on a blanket by the bay. I finally had a place I could write it all out, without advice or direction. I was being heard. That is all I ever needed. To be heard so I could just let go.
In this space, we Check In with each other. There are no rules or timelines or need for responses. There is no gossip or psychology. There is no judgment. This is space to be a women, writer, mother, friend to the Dark and Light one, a treehugger and shapeshifter. I can be all of me, the endless fluid of being.
~~~
My Sirens like to say nice things about me. Most of it makes me blush. But I will share their words with you anyway.
Zita says: I met Foxy through Lila and the Empress and this Foxy was instant connection for me – don’t know if she felt it but it was clear and real for me. Why did this beauty invoke such a reaction? Here we go…have you ever been with someone who causes you to feel like you never want to leave their space? This is she. She’s the warmth we all wanted our mamas to give, the fierce truth speaker that we wish we were/are ourselves and so worldly I wonder if there’s anything this multi-faceted beam has never done. She’s apple trees and tofu, barefeet and fearless breastfeeder; she’s smoldering sexy and down home comfort. She too smells of cinnamon – what’s with this group of cinnamon women? – and patchouli and is a hammock sleeper; owner of big dogs and hostess extraordinaire…Foxy, you ARE love.
Noa says: You are the fire spinner
sweating off layers of old self
moving through time and space
unafraid of dark caves
and wide open spaces
I see you as the traveler
on a journey only the fiercest, bravest,
most prepared
wild and clear woman could take
You are apple tree grower
man and woman together
harmonious with earth and rain
you could walk on the sun
and write about it later
You move mountains
swim roaring rivers upstream and down
jumping like a salmon
finding her way home
You are sexy hot mama mad
insipring me to strip down
to my most bare naked beauty
For all this and so much more beyond language, I love you
The Empress says : Iridescent, pulsating, free-spirited, creative, authentic, trusting, global. She is a woman of tutus and motorcycle boots, feather earrings and glitter in her hair. She is chartreuse nail polish and ripped jeans. She is raw food maker and bread eater. She is dance hall queen and yogini. She is wild tantrums and focused breath. She has beautiful hands. She is sweat lodges and fine dining and cabins in the mountains and houses in the country. Her home is a refuge, always waiting with open arms - sparkly chandeliers, painted walls, toys in the bathtub, toothpaste in the sink, warm beds for all, real art on the walls, crafts to be done. couches for cozying up. She is musky and sensual and earthy. She is teacher, muse, healer, birther, soul sister.
Lila says: the heat of fire, the taste of honeycomb, dirt under the fingernails and feathers in the hair. triple faced goddess. the Jaguar. defiant and dissident, lover and leader. the heart worn outside the skin. morning glory and jasmine, intuitive and instinctual, provocative and imaginative. creator and spell caster. nature's daughter, irreverent, ravishing.
As you read us crack open from the core and with our words, be seen, we hope you will be inspired to find your own siren song and share it with the world.
The time is now to be heard.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
more beginnings
it’s me. the empress. empress of small things and mundane things and magical things too. empress of hearth and home and husband. empress of care and feeding and kissing boo-boos for two small children. empress of trash and laundry and gourmet meals, of stories, words and visions, of dance and movement and breath, of tooth fairy glitter and love notes in school lunches and cozy beds, of wanton sex and harsh words and nuzzling my nose into the soft hairs at the nape of my husband’s neck. all of it is my domain.
in the tarot deck, the empress is the card of creation and gestation. she grows things. she is mother, she is abundance, she is love and femininity and nurturing. she is venus and demeter. and at this time in my life, as partner and mother, the image of an archetypal mother fits. but there is more to this symbol of empress. as a woman, i stand in the fertile womb of creation – rebirthing myself to new ideas, new humilities, new awakenings, new visions – an endless opening of myself to all possibility and all disappointment too.
i embrace her in her abundance especially as life teaches me that there is creativity and abundance in all things – in destruction and loneliness, in losing your money or losing your shit – that i can gestate and grow and cultivate so much, that there is room for it all, that i don’t have to, as i was once taught, always be the good girl, the smart girl, the go-to-girl, the fix-it-up girl. that i can trust in the darkness and she too can be a good friend.
and so, when i sat down to consider what i might call myself in this space, how i might evoke my energy without giving my identity away, i decided to call on her, the empress with her golden hair and crown of stars, to guide my way on these pages as i gestate and create and bring forth ideas and words and personal revelations. she reminds me that the gift of creation, the ability to give birth – to humans or art or thoughts or to the inner soul – is many things and asks for patience, trust, surrender, willingness, and courage.
here, on these pages, you will come to know my husband, the magician, a man who creates magic by alligning himself with the elements in a concrete way, through hard work and balance and mastery of alchemy, of earth, air, fire and water – much like the magician in the tarot deck who is another form of creator.
i create through birthing, my man creates through building. this tendency for both us to be fueled by creative fire makes for some forceful horn-locking but one of us almost always becomes water to the other one’s rock. it is a partnership of opposition, of polarity, of magnetism, of passion. it is a marriage of friendship and laughter and hot sex – as long as i’m not breastfeeding, because then it is more like desperate and scanty and infrequent but at least it is always, always, reliably good. i call him my bonus. he is the devoted, loyal, true-blue husband and the stick-around father for the children i always knew i’d have even when i doubted whether or not i’d have the man. he is the prize.
we have two kiddos – turtle boy and monkey girl. they are delightful and different from each other and funny and exhausting and they are another kind of glue that binds me and my husband together.
if you saw turtle boy at the park or on his skateboard or jumping off the high-dive, you would not understand why i’ve decided to call him turtle boy. he’d look a lot more like tarzan boy with his ropey arms and banged up knees and dude-like walk. but on the inside, this boy knows his journey. he takes his time. and, like the turtle who carries his home with him, this little boy is at home everywhere. he is a traveller, he is flexible, he makes friends in any situation or, if not, he happily entertains himself. i really love him for the way he is so still in his center. and for the way he goes so wild on the outside.
monkey girl is just that. she clings and climbs and moves easily from place to place. she is wide-eyed with curiosity and quick. there is much to be revealed still since she is so young, just barely walking now, but i melt at the way she scrunches up her nose when she smiles and squeals when she thinks you are coming to play chase. her eyes, they are endless and knowing and wise. i fall into them and want to know what it is she understands.
well, that feels like enough about me. except, perhaps, that you might like to know that everyday at 4, well, sometimes 5 but never 3, i pour myself a glass of wine and begin to cook our evening meal. cooking gives me great pleasure. i grocery shop or go to the farmer’s market nearly everyday in search of something seasonal, local, colorful, beautiful, irresistable – and then i plan a meal. with a glass of wine in hand and the monkey girl strapped on in the carrier, i begin to cook. i look at my french dutch oven or my morrocan tagine or my sautee pan and i try to decide what to do for dinner. this is a creative moment i can claim in every day, even days when i don’t write or dance or even breathe very deeply, i can cook. i can nourish and feed and create in one little pot on my stove. and i love this.
here is a bit i wrote about this writing project, this sisterhood project, this soul project called the siren’s song. i hope it explains a bit about what this means to me and how it came to be…
It all started with a little bar of soap. Sirens’ soap; a gift to each of us from our hostess. Five uniquely different women gathered to celebrate the journey of our lives. Women, writers, poets, dancers, yoginis, runners, midwifes, teachers, mothers, lovers, seekers, magicians. Sirens. All of us collected to honor life and give thanks and bear witness to the life that is. The life that is different from our regrets and different from our dreams, it is the life as it lives, holding the whole, without apology or censorship.
We carved out a slice from this carcass of life to celebrate the path of woman, maestro, mother, crone, virgin, harlot. And in these days we spent together and the words that came in the months that followed, our dialogue grew into the song of the sirens. Our irreverant name of Sirens, because of that bar of soap, grew into a regular salutation between us and now we share it with you.
What if one woman told her whole truth? And what if five women dared to do it together? This is what we strive to do here. And this is the very thing we invite each of you to do too. You may listen quietly to the siren song in your heart, or share it with us by email, or invite a group of women you trust to share their true authentic story with you in person. But here we are, riding rough-shod, willing to lay it all bare before you – the sacred and profane, the boring and the shocking, the illicit and the tender, the risky and the benign.
Here you will find a dialogue between five women – a mix of voices, conventional and rebellious, traditional and absurd, magical and tortured – but it will be the truth as we know it, protected of course by fictitious names and solemn vows of secrecy. There is no other way to do it, no other way to admit to the living desire, the sexual abandon, the pills popped, joints smoked, alcohol consumed, the deep dark secrets, glorious success and perfect failures, the taboo fantasies and the shadow that lives in each of us without the cover of protection in such a public domain.. But the essence of the stories we tell are real. Sometimes polished and sometimes raw, what you will find is the living truth of five women who savor their lives and live their lives with passion, intention and abandon. Women who make mistakes, who know hunger, who have been bedmates with heartbreak. Women who want a place to share and be seen, who want to celebrate and grieve in the presence of others. And this is the journey we invite you to join.
for now, i will close. and i will close with the offering of my siren sisters, a collection of descriptions and images and words that define me – sometimes more honest than we can describe ourselves.
You are a Sycamore tree. You lighten up a space. When I am with you any lethargy disappears and your personal medicine invigorates me. You make me aware of the sweetness of life, even when you act as my shade your energy brightens my world.
-Foxy
You are effortless beauty, the five senses woven together seamlessly. You are the best chicken soup I have ever had, accented with coconut and lemongrass. You are tall leather boots to go out for coffee, sexy and ageless, big shades and quick tears. You are empathy, the pulse of emotion, of availability, of open-heart. You are strong and willful and self-determined. You are the teacher I wish my kids had, the mother I wish I had. You are lush and waterfall and fascinated and student and sister and life partner. Someday, you will be the elder holding all the eager little children in her gorgeous apron, giving each of them a job, a place, irreplaceable. You inspire me.
-Noa
Oh sugar sprinkled, honey dripped Empress! You are show stopping, shyly sit across the room and stare at you beautiful. The real kicker is that you are equally if not even more beautiful on the inside. You are gourmet chef, mindful mother, Shiva invoking compelling friend. You are African Queen though blondest of blonde…you are Waldorf educator and birthing mentor…shop on a budget and look like a million bucks… you are clarity, inspiration and more…more than anything Empress, YOU are love.
-Zita
magical and mysterious. Grace. deep caverns. sensual, luscious. the owl at midnight, the shelter in the storm. orchids, the primal deep, the place where pleasure grows. empathic and inventive. a woman who knows how to get shit done. Traveler inside and out. valiant and fecund. musk and amber. diaphanous, container, dance of darkness, lover of the light.
-Lila
until next time,
signing off,
the empress
in the tarot deck, the empress is the card of creation and gestation. she grows things. she is mother, she is abundance, she is love and femininity and nurturing. she is venus and demeter. and at this time in my life, as partner and mother, the image of an archetypal mother fits. but there is more to this symbol of empress. as a woman, i stand in the fertile womb of creation – rebirthing myself to new ideas, new humilities, new awakenings, new visions – an endless opening of myself to all possibility and all disappointment too.
i embrace her in her abundance especially as life teaches me that there is creativity and abundance in all things – in destruction and loneliness, in losing your money or losing your shit – that i can gestate and grow and cultivate so much, that there is room for it all, that i don’t have to, as i was once taught, always be the good girl, the smart girl, the go-to-girl, the fix-it-up girl. that i can trust in the darkness and she too can be a good friend.
and so, when i sat down to consider what i might call myself in this space, how i might evoke my energy without giving my identity away, i decided to call on her, the empress with her golden hair and crown of stars, to guide my way on these pages as i gestate and create and bring forth ideas and words and personal revelations. she reminds me that the gift of creation, the ability to give birth – to humans or art or thoughts or to the inner soul – is many things and asks for patience, trust, surrender, willingness, and courage.
here, on these pages, you will come to know my husband, the magician, a man who creates magic by alligning himself with the elements in a concrete way, through hard work and balance and mastery of alchemy, of earth, air, fire and water – much like the magician in the tarot deck who is another form of creator.
i create through birthing, my man creates through building. this tendency for both us to be fueled by creative fire makes for some forceful horn-locking but one of us almost always becomes water to the other one’s rock. it is a partnership of opposition, of polarity, of magnetism, of passion. it is a marriage of friendship and laughter and hot sex – as long as i’m not breastfeeding, because then it is more like desperate and scanty and infrequent but at least it is always, always, reliably good. i call him my bonus. he is the devoted, loyal, true-blue husband and the stick-around father for the children i always knew i’d have even when i doubted whether or not i’d have the man. he is the prize.
we have two kiddos – turtle boy and monkey girl. they are delightful and different from each other and funny and exhausting and they are another kind of glue that binds me and my husband together.
if you saw turtle boy at the park or on his skateboard or jumping off the high-dive, you would not understand why i’ve decided to call him turtle boy. he’d look a lot more like tarzan boy with his ropey arms and banged up knees and dude-like walk. but on the inside, this boy knows his journey. he takes his time. and, like the turtle who carries his home with him, this little boy is at home everywhere. he is a traveller, he is flexible, he makes friends in any situation or, if not, he happily entertains himself. i really love him for the way he is so still in his center. and for the way he goes so wild on the outside.
monkey girl is just that. she clings and climbs and moves easily from place to place. she is wide-eyed with curiosity and quick. there is much to be revealed still since she is so young, just barely walking now, but i melt at the way she scrunches up her nose when she smiles and squeals when she thinks you are coming to play chase. her eyes, they are endless and knowing and wise. i fall into them and want to know what it is she understands.
well, that feels like enough about me. except, perhaps, that you might like to know that everyday at 4, well, sometimes 5 but never 3, i pour myself a glass of wine and begin to cook our evening meal. cooking gives me great pleasure. i grocery shop or go to the farmer’s market nearly everyday in search of something seasonal, local, colorful, beautiful, irresistable – and then i plan a meal. with a glass of wine in hand and the monkey girl strapped on in the carrier, i begin to cook. i look at my french dutch oven or my morrocan tagine or my sautee pan and i try to decide what to do for dinner. this is a creative moment i can claim in every day, even days when i don’t write or dance or even breathe very deeply, i can cook. i can nourish and feed and create in one little pot on my stove. and i love this.
here is a bit i wrote about this writing project, this sisterhood project, this soul project called the siren’s song. i hope it explains a bit about what this means to me and how it came to be…
It all started with a little bar of soap. Sirens’ soap; a gift to each of us from our hostess. Five uniquely different women gathered to celebrate the journey of our lives. Women, writers, poets, dancers, yoginis, runners, midwifes, teachers, mothers, lovers, seekers, magicians. Sirens. All of us collected to honor life and give thanks and bear witness to the life that is. The life that is different from our regrets and different from our dreams, it is the life as it lives, holding the whole, without apology or censorship.
We carved out a slice from this carcass of life to celebrate the path of woman, maestro, mother, crone, virgin, harlot. And in these days we spent together and the words that came in the months that followed, our dialogue grew into the song of the sirens. Our irreverant name of Sirens, because of that bar of soap, grew into a regular salutation between us and now we share it with you.
What if one woman told her whole truth? And what if five women dared to do it together? This is what we strive to do here. And this is the very thing we invite each of you to do too. You may listen quietly to the siren song in your heart, or share it with us by email, or invite a group of women you trust to share their true authentic story with you in person. But here we are, riding rough-shod, willing to lay it all bare before you – the sacred and profane, the boring and the shocking, the illicit and the tender, the risky and the benign.
Here you will find a dialogue between five women – a mix of voices, conventional and rebellious, traditional and absurd, magical and tortured – but it will be the truth as we know it, protected of course by fictitious names and solemn vows of secrecy. There is no other way to do it, no other way to admit to the living desire, the sexual abandon, the pills popped, joints smoked, alcohol consumed, the deep dark secrets, glorious success and perfect failures, the taboo fantasies and the shadow that lives in each of us without the cover of protection in such a public domain.. But the essence of the stories we tell are real. Sometimes polished and sometimes raw, what you will find is the living truth of five women who savor their lives and live their lives with passion, intention and abandon. Women who make mistakes, who know hunger, who have been bedmates with heartbreak. Women who want a place to share and be seen, who want to celebrate and grieve in the presence of others. And this is the journey we invite you to join.
for now, i will close. and i will close with the offering of my siren sisters, a collection of descriptions and images and words that define me – sometimes more honest than we can describe ourselves.
You are a Sycamore tree. You lighten up a space. When I am with you any lethargy disappears and your personal medicine invigorates me. You make me aware of the sweetness of life, even when you act as my shade your energy brightens my world.
-Foxy
You are effortless beauty, the five senses woven together seamlessly. You are the best chicken soup I have ever had, accented with coconut and lemongrass. You are tall leather boots to go out for coffee, sexy and ageless, big shades and quick tears. You are empathy, the pulse of emotion, of availability, of open-heart. You are strong and willful and self-determined. You are the teacher I wish my kids had, the mother I wish I had. You are lush and waterfall and fascinated and student and sister and life partner. Someday, you will be the elder holding all the eager little children in her gorgeous apron, giving each of them a job, a place, irreplaceable. You inspire me.
-Noa
Oh sugar sprinkled, honey dripped Empress! You are show stopping, shyly sit across the room and stare at you beautiful. The real kicker is that you are equally if not even more beautiful on the inside. You are gourmet chef, mindful mother, Shiva invoking compelling friend. You are African Queen though blondest of blonde…you are Waldorf educator and birthing mentor…shop on a budget and look like a million bucks… you are clarity, inspiration and more…more than anything Empress, YOU are love.
-Zita
magical and mysterious. Grace. deep caverns. sensual, luscious. the owl at midnight, the shelter in the storm. orchids, the primal deep, the place where pleasure grows. empathic and inventive. a woman who knows how to get shit done. Traveler inside and out. valiant and fecund. musk and amber. diaphanous, container, dance of darkness, lover of the light.
-Lila
until next time,
signing off,
the empress
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Noa: In the Beginning
In the beginning I was a mama. I remember an image from when Ariel was an infant, the image I had of myself as an eagle or a hawk, some bird with a magnificent wingspan, beating my wings against the walls of my 1860 Vermont house and sneaking away every chance I got to smoke by myself. That was six or so years ago.
Now we live on a little street about a mile from everything else in our lives - Ariel's school and Wren's preschool, Red's office, the library and the YMCA and the synagogue we don't go to much and the pedestrian mall that fills up with tourists in the summer when it finally warms up around here. Our neighborhood has deep lots and roving packs of kids under ten and more swing-sets than you can shake a stick at and woods where the dogs can run off-leash. It is a little small. I miss walking alone in New York City, living alone somewhere Spanish-speaking, surrounded by abode and sand.
I've chosen this, to plant somewhere. Wanted this. Still do. And yet, and yet - Red and I can't shake the fantasy of ditching it all, some days sooner than others, to drive around and live out of a camper van. We're both business owners with no paychecks and no trust funds, living on faith and fumes and hard work and patience.
Ariel’s going on first grade now and Wren is three. Ariel is plowing through the same Judy Blume books I loved as a kid. She’s agile and strong and sensitive and immovable. She is self-possessed unlike anyone I've ever met. She’s autumn in New England, that changeable, sometimes startlingly beautiful. Wren is sturdy and funny, finding her place in this family constellation of ours. She is early spring, a little fragile and yet inevitable and steady and subtle and unmistakable in her own timing. She races along the gender spectrum, causing me & Red to wonder if maybe she actually is a boy. Time will tell.
In the beginning I was alone, writing like mad and smoking like mad and pining for the man I was convinced was out there somewhere. It never took long to determine who wasn’t him and I never was all that interested in dating. At the risk of sounding totally narcissistic, more men have fallen in love with me than I have been in love with. There have been only two, actually – Beam, when I was eighteen, who rode me around back country roads on his motorcycle and gave me dahlias in huge bunches and was maddeningly unavailable emotionally. And Red.
Red and I met a year or so after college. I was all about trusting the universe and he was all about being miserable with his long-time girlfriend. We met and walked in the woods together and couldn’t stop talking, although I truly thought we’d just be friends. It wasn’t until a year or so after we met that he kissed me, pushed me up against a wall in my parents’ house and kissed me and put his hands on my body and I knew I was home. Our tenth anniversary is coming up. A friend of mine recently told me that “we marry our enemies,” which has caused me to do a lot of thinking. And I can see it, where Red and I hold each other to our best selves, which sometimes cannot actually be accomplished without confronting our worst, our ugliest, our most painful corners.
I have two recurring dreams: one is that my molars are rotting and falling out, falling out in the same way clumps of hair would fall. The other is that I discover a long-forgotten room or even wing in my house. The former is always awful, full of panic, unstoppable. The latter is wondrous and always a little disappointing to wake up from.
I flew cross country nine months ago to meet these Sirens. There was no agenda. There was not even a practical explanation for making such a big trip for such a short time to meet a bunch of (for all intensive purposes) strangers. But there could have been nothing less strange about our time together, which was both effortless and challenging, full of yes’s, of newness, of sitting with my own judgments and then moving through them, of myself as much as anything. Most of all, those few days together led to our check-ins, which gave birth to this Siren Song. My voice is an alto. Sometimes I feel like I talk too much, but at the same time, I am discovering silence, my own power in sitting, waiting, creating space.
I don’t know how to introduce myself, when there is so much I want to share. And yet the stories are just stories; they will come out as needed, usually surprising even me. (That’s when I know I’m getting somewhere.)
Here is what my Siren Sisters have to say about me. Oh, to be a jewel with these faceted sides, as seen through the eyes of four of the most powerful, exquisite, complex, earthy, fiery, fierce, smart alive women I’ve ever known – Lila, The Empress, Foxy & Zita.
~
Lila: Seeker, the constellations in the night sky. tenderhearted, curious and inquisitive. wild daisies and evergreens. feisty and wicked smart. poet, excavator, weaver, the dance of the spider, the movement of the air. numinous and nuanced, jeweled and beautiful. vulnerable and creative and practical. The space where things conjoin.
The Empress: Glimmering, poetic, prancing, delightful, watchful, tentative, bold. She is runner and thinker and poet. She is afternoon swims at the YMCA and walks in town. She is intellectual and environmental and political and thoughtful. She is reformed smoker and hopeful thinker and late-at-night husband romancer. She is brave and provocative and distinctive. She is ponytails and curly hair and bright eyes with endless lashes. She is petite and dainty but hearty. She is talkative, sincere, tender, deep. She is brave and forthright and friendly. She is sneak-away-to-the-coffee house for precious anonymity. She shows up willing and open-hearted and generous. She is both stream of consciousness and succinct. She can wander wide-eyed in innocence or piercingly focus as she chooses. Her ability to paint images with words is stunning.
Foxy: White Willow is all around you. From what i understand and feel about this tree is that it brings clarity. Your prose is never complicated or a puzzle to place together. You are clear in your path as bringer of balance and bliss. When I see your smile, I feel love welling up, and nothing is a better cleanser than love.
Zita: The Poetess, word juggler, cinnamon toast and life shapeshifter. This woman is mammoth amounts of dynamite in a petite package. The corkscrews of her hair could alone entertain for hours on end....constellations, slight though they may be, make their home across her nose. You are a fresh voice, you are a hot-off-the-press woman, you are an untouched journey, you are fierce acceptance, you are love.
~
As for me, I still pinch myself that I’m part of this circle. Literally pinch myself. Can't wait to see them again in person, dream of painting each other's nails and howling and sobbing and laughing till crying and cooking giant pots of soup and running naked into bracing cold water, or an ocean as warm as a womb.
Now we live on a little street about a mile from everything else in our lives - Ariel's school and Wren's preschool, Red's office, the library and the YMCA and the synagogue we don't go to much and the pedestrian mall that fills up with tourists in the summer when it finally warms up around here. Our neighborhood has deep lots and roving packs of kids under ten and more swing-sets than you can shake a stick at and woods where the dogs can run off-leash. It is a little small. I miss walking alone in New York City, living alone somewhere Spanish-speaking, surrounded by abode and sand.
I've chosen this, to plant somewhere. Wanted this. Still do. And yet, and yet - Red and I can't shake the fantasy of ditching it all, some days sooner than others, to drive around and live out of a camper van. We're both business owners with no paychecks and no trust funds, living on faith and fumes and hard work and patience.
Ariel’s going on first grade now and Wren is three. Ariel is plowing through the same Judy Blume books I loved as a kid. She’s agile and strong and sensitive and immovable. She is self-possessed unlike anyone I've ever met. She’s autumn in New England, that changeable, sometimes startlingly beautiful. Wren is sturdy and funny, finding her place in this family constellation of ours. She is early spring, a little fragile and yet inevitable and steady and subtle and unmistakable in her own timing. She races along the gender spectrum, causing me & Red to wonder if maybe she actually is a boy. Time will tell.
In the beginning I was alone, writing like mad and smoking like mad and pining for the man I was convinced was out there somewhere. It never took long to determine who wasn’t him and I never was all that interested in dating. At the risk of sounding totally narcissistic, more men have fallen in love with me than I have been in love with. There have been only two, actually – Beam, when I was eighteen, who rode me around back country roads on his motorcycle and gave me dahlias in huge bunches and was maddeningly unavailable emotionally. And Red.
Red and I met a year or so after college. I was all about trusting the universe and he was all about being miserable with his long-time girlfriend. We met and walked in the woods together and couldn’t stop talking, although I truly thought we’d just be friends. It wasn’t until a year or so after we met that he kissed me, pushed me up against a wall in my parents’ house and kissed me and put his hands on my body and I knew I was home. Our tenth anniversary is coming up. A friend of mine recently told me that “we marry our enemies,” which has caused me to do a lot of thinking. And I can see it, where Red and I hold each other to our best selves, which sometimes cannot actually be accomplished without confronting our worst, our ugliest, our most painful corners.
I have two recurring dreams: one is that my molars are rotting and falling out, falling out in the same way clumps of hair would fall. The other is that I discover a long-forgotten room or even wing in my house. The former is always awful, full of panic, unstoppable. The latter is wondrous and always a little disappointing to wake up from.
I flew cross country nine months ago to meet these Sirens. There was no agenda. There was not even a practical explanation for making such a big trip for such a short time to meet a bunch of (for all intensive purposes) strangers. But there could have been nothing less strange about our time together, which was both effortless and challenging, full of yes’s, of newness, of sitting with my own judgments and then moving through them, of myself as much as anything. Most of all, those few days together led to our check-ins, which gave birth to this Siren Song. My voice is an alto. Sometimes I feel like I talk too much, but at the same time, I am discovering silence, my own power in sitting, waiting, creating space.
I don’t know how to introduce myself, when there is so much I want to share. And yet the stories are just stories; they will come out as needed, usually surprising even me. (That’s when I know I’m getting somewhere.)
Here is what my Siren Sisters have to say about me. Oh, to be a jewel with these faceted sides, as seen through the eyes of four of the most powerful, exquisite, complex, earthy, fiery, fierce, smart alive women I’ve ever known – Lila, The Empress, Foxy & Zita.
~
Lila: Seeker, the constellations in the night sky. tenderhearted, curious and inquisitive. wild daisies and evergreens. feisty and wicked smart. poet, excavator, weaver, the dance of the spider, the movement of the air. numinous and nuanced, jeweled and beautiful. vulnerable and creative and practical. The space where things conjoin.
The Empress: Glimmering, poetic, prancing, delightful, watchful, tentative, bold. She is runner and thinker and poet. She is afternoon swims at the YMCA and walks in town. She is intellectual and environmental and political and thoughtful. She is reformed smoker and hopeful thinker and late-at-night husband romancer. She is brave and provocative and distinctive. She is ponytails and curly hair and bright eyes with endless lashes. She is petite and dainty but hearty. She is talkative, sincere, tender, deep. She is brave and forthright and friendly. She is sneak-away-to-the-coffee house for precious anonymity. She shows up willing and open-hearted and generous. She is both stream of consciousness and succinct. She can wander wide-eyed in innocence or piercingly focus as she chooses. Her ability to paint images with words is stunning.
Foxy: White Willow is all around you. From what i understand and feel about this tree is that it brings clarity. Your prose is never complicated or a puzzle to place together. You are clear in your path as bringer of balance and bliss. When I see your smile, I feel love welling up, and nothing is a better cleanser than love.
Zita: The Poetess, word juggler, cinnamon toast and life shapeshifter. This woman is mammoth amounts of dynamite in a petite package. The corkscrews of her hair could alone entertain for hours on end....constellations, slight though they may be, make their home across her nose. You are a fresh voice, you are a hot-off-the-press woman, you are an untouched journey, you are fierce acceptance, you are love.
~
As for me, I still pinch myself that I’m part of this circle. Literally pinch myself. Can't wait to see them again in person, dream of painting each other's nails and howling and sobbing and laughing till crying and cooking giant pots of soup and running naked into bracing cold water, or an ocean as warm as a womb.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Zita: Debut
All right…enough already…I’ve started and stopped my introduction to Sirens’ Song four times and since I’m not “technically” the writer in the group, what I’m attempting has felt fake and not of my essence. So here’s to new beginnings!
I’m flashing hotter than hell today, building my hens an additional shelter, working sheep and sweating like a pig….AND…I love it. I’ve settled in with my ice cold beer, an empty kitchen and feeling the ahhhh that comes over me when I know I’m about to connect with my Sirens.
That ahhhh is why we’ve decided to open ourselves to the rest of the world and make available to women everywhere that which we now find so endearing…so much our center….so having the place to clean house and BE at home. Our essence, our reason for being here, our conversation and our check ins are for the sake of Truth…for honoring that which it, at times, feels like no one else wants to hear…for holding space and opening new doors to our souls. There’s something about being heard by this circle of women that has opened things in me that I know…I KNOW would not have blossomed otherwise. They hold me accountable without judgment, they find beauty in my simple words, they honor my masculine side and have been the catalyst to the growth of my feminine. Never…ever before have I found a circle of women…of beings brave enough to do what these women do for me. And now we offer to you the opportunity to be the vigilant observer of just that….meet us here daily…bring your beer, your wine, your tea, your water…come alone or in a circle of friends…agree or disagree with us…embrace us or find our energy a space to relieve your fear, tension and anger. The Siren entices, awakens, is alluring and is all of that without any particular intention. Welcome.
I am Zita….I am sooooooo Zita…(doesn’t that name conjure up images of Italy, wine, grape vines, sultry sex, amazing food and splendor?) . I am separated from Buzz Kill and mother to: Cosmo Girl, Farmer, Twinkle Toes and Nitro5 (they chose their own names). My hair has not been it’s natural color for 25 years, I’ve learned to totally embrace indoor tanning and pedicures, Hanky Panky undies and occasionally indulge in a Brazilian wax. The other half of the time I’m: working the farm, tending the garden, training the dogs, wrestling sheep, and birthing other women’s babies. I embrace and am drawn into the masculine and feminine nature of things and find myself walking that fenceline often. I love: Byron Katie, Nancy, Birthing From Within,belly dancing, my children and sex. I’m not afraid to speak my mind (I thought everyone did that), I’m great at creative problem solving and am an amazing comfort food cook.
I’m flashing hotter than hell today, building my hens an additional shelter, working sheep and sweating like a pig….AND…I love it. I’ve settled in with my ice cold beer, an empty kitchen and feeling the ahhhh that comes over me when I know I’m about to connect with my Sirens.
That ahhhh is why we’ve decided to open ourselves to the rest of the world and make available to women everywhere that which we now find so endearing…so much our center….so having the place to clean house and BE at home. Our essence, our reason for being here, our conversation and our check ins are for the sake of Truth…for honoring that which it, at times, feels like no one else wants to hear…for holding space and opening new doors to our souls. There’s something about being heard by this circle of women that has opened things in me that I know…I KNOW would not have blossomed otherwise. They hold me accountable without judgment, they find beauty in my simple words, they honor my masculine side and have been the catalyst to the growth of my feminine. Never…ever before have I found a circle of women…of beings brave enough to do what these women do for me. And now we offer to you the opportunity to be the vigilant observer of just that….meet us here daily…bring your beer, your wine, your tea, your water…come alone or in a circle of friends…agree or disagree with us…embrace us or find our energy a space to relieve your fear, tension and anger. The Siren entices, awakens, is alluring and is all of that without any particular intention. Welcome.
I am Zita….I am sooooooo Zita…(doesn’t that name conjure up images of Italy, wine, grape vines, sultry sex, amazing food and splendor?) . I am separated from Buzz Kill and mother to: Cosmo Girl, Farmer, Twinkle Toes and Nitro5 (they chose their own names). My hair has not been it’s natural color for 25 years, I’ve learned to totally embrace indoor tanning and pedicures, Hanky Panky undies and occasionally indulge in a Brazilian wax. The other half of the time I’m: working the farm, tending the garden, training the dogs, wrestling sheep, and birthing other women’s babies. I embrace and am drawn into the masculine and feminine nature of things and find myself walking that fenceline often. I love: Byron Katie, Nancy, Birthing From Within,belly dancing, my children and sex. I’m not afraid to speak my mind (I thought everyone did that), I’m great at creative problem solving and am an amazing comfort food cook.
The Empress says of me:
Smoldering, playful, flirtatious, chameleon, timeless, classy, sassy. She is a woman of many children yet a woman who fully owns herself. She is Sunday morning wine drinker and one-armed cookbook chef. She is willing to reinvent herself time and time again – body builder, retreat owner, wife, single mother, birth worker, feminist, tantric goddess. She is the question-asker, the go-to-the-jugular investigator, the reflective mirror. She is warm arms and back rubs and a body to lean into. She is big earrings and saucy haircuts and shimmery lipstick. She is camp fire builder and dancer. She is an orator, storyteller, oral historian. She is partner and lover and seeker and hero. Her gaze is intense but always ready to split into a thousand beams of light. Her spirit is like a lighthouse and her radiance offers safe harbor to any seeking one.
Oh holy! BTW Empress, how did you ever remember the one armed chef?!
On the flip side of the coin I don’t do well with: linear thinking, black and white, gourmet cooking, make up (it makes my eyes burn), lack of air conditioning, and people whining for the sake of giving their Victim airtime.
Lila writes …
Zita: kick ass, wild woman, maternal embrace and sexy siren. brilliance, pure brilliance. fierce as fire. unraveling things down to the bone. Wolf. passionate and brave, intentional and subversive, magnolia and lilacs, teacher and breath of life. Insight. calm under pressure and laugh out loud funny. inspired, force of nature. spacious, loyal, delicious.
Laugh out loud funny and delicious…now I really like that!
And then there’s Foxy…oh Foxy what a time you’ve had and you’ve chosen my most cherished venue for your description:
You are Sweet Chestnut. Your medicine teaches me that I need not be attached to misery or old patterns, and that guilt is utterly useless. When I feel you I feel present and focused, honest and true to the moment. You are like a map guiding to better places.
a map guiding to better places...oooo how I hope that I am exactly that..and finally Noa...my newst Siren to embrace and this lovely poet writes:
You are incisive.
Laser clear.
Ruthlessly committed to the truth.
You inspire me to step into my own story, own it.
You are refusal to settle.
You are tender and protective,
selective and irreverent.
You are drinks at noon girls,
country music blasting,
roots and freedom all in one.
You are a blazing sunrise.
Laser clear.
Ruthlessly committed to the truth.
You inspire me to step into my own story, own it.
You are refusal to settle.
You are tender and protective,
selective and irreverent.
You are drinks at noon girls,
country music blasting,
roots and freedom all in one.
You are a blazing sunrise.
So there you have it: the good, the bad, the ugly...I am direct speak and shy and I'm plunging head on into this watery abyss known now as the Sirens' Song.
-Zita
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Lila: Beginnings
two women, eye to eye,
measuring each other's spirit, each other's
limitless desire,
a whole new poetry beginning here.
(Adrienne Rich, “The Dream of a Common Language”)
measuring each other's spirit, each other's
limitless desire,
a whole new poetry beginning here.
(Adrienne Rich, “The Dream of a Common Language”)
We are five women. We are, each of us different: inhabiting different geographies of landscape and interior topography; living different collections of work and family, inside and outside, domesticity and the untamed wild; wrestling with our own shadowed monsters; celebrating our own hard won victories and the terrible sweetness of our own surrenders. We live in crowded city apartments where the lights never go out and the sounds never cease, in rural houses where the sheep need to be fed and the apples picked, and towns where neighbor kids come over to play and the doors are rarely locked. We love men who are husbands, lovers, partners, and we find our own way to the meaning of this, of them, of the “us” we create and destroy and create new again. We are mothers of an only child and six children and everything in the middle. Between us we have babies at the breast and grown babies no longer living at home; we drink lattes and herbal tea, red wine and whiskey. We put blond highlights in our hair and get a good summer tan, forget to wash our hair for over a week and can make out constellations in our smattering of freckles. We wear cowboy boots and running shoes, yoga pants and dresses, whatever can be found in the pile of clean laundry and nothing but the bareness of skin. We find god in churches and synagogues and the wide open earth where mountains come as shelter and the ocean come as mother, in an early morning run and the taste of fresh coffee, the still small voice and the roaring of desire. We make love and make beds and depending on the day, we do both, or neither. There is no pattern here, between us, among us. Except this: we ache and seek and desire to live fully alive, to show up for ourselves and one another, to speak the fullness of our own truth.
Here, in what began as a group of women sitting in a living room, daring to speak the truth of our lives, then turned into writing to one another for the sake of stilling enough to hear our own voice, to be present with ourselves and received in the witness of others. We began to unravel and unwind our own experiences of our selves and life, knitting together from these strands a sense of community and continuity, a container for our siren songs. And now we come here, believing that there is power is women naming for themselves their own experiences, in stepping past comparison or conformity, and finding in another’s truth the invitation to speak our own. What we live is different. What we write is different, coming from the fabric of our own experiences in the world and inside ourselves. But here we give voice to the hunger and satisfaction, to the known and unknown, the daily and the limitless, the light and the shadows, the wandering around lost and the incomplete empty spaces, the raw and raucous, the recipes we cook for dinner and the worry that there will not be enough money to pay the rent, the sex that fucks us wide open and the morning spent cleaning the tile grout, the fears and stories and dreams, the startings and stoppings, beginnings and endings, and mostly the whole glorious mess in the space in-between. The only requirement is this: to speak our truth.
And I, Lila, am one of these women. I am here to speak my truth, which to be quite honest shifts, and evolves and sometimes I don’t even know what it is until I sit down, come to this space of women, listen to myself and write.
I live in Chicago: a three bedroom apartment in a six flat, on the northside of the city that breathes raw energy, and where I live is lined in trees that tell me what season it is and I read them like a map, listen to them like an oracle. This city has found me, formed me, and its streets are my like my veins. I live here with my husband of twelve years, Elliott. I love him with devotion and am mean to him, have gone to hell with him and walked the earth with him, wrestle with him and trust him. We fight and fuck and fight again. We fall in love and drift apart; we always come back home. I live here with our five year old son, George. I do not feel like a “real” mother, the kind that knows what she is doing or has her shit together or has in any way learned the rules of the game. But I know that he and I belong together, and that we are here to somehow teach each other what we were born to learn. And these are my three great loves: this city, this man, this child.
I also love the particular of things, life, the way that soul speaks the embodied language of the sensate world and wants to not just be looked at from a distance but entered into with fullness. This is how I know life, and I find god in all of it: high heels and purple eyeliner and the smell of lilacs and the feel of rocks worn down smooth from water. Fur blankets and my vibrator, old books and the statues in old cemeteries. Ritual and routine, the ocean and the way certain animals seem to come to me, visit me in the strangest ways and become like guides to me. Writing, working on my thesis, and this work feeds me like nothing else I have ever known. Taking George to his full day preschool and picking him up again, and some of our best conversations happen in those six minutes in the car as he looks out the window and let his thoughts wander. I love my dream life and stories, road trips and poetry and open windows. I love knowing that I can have had ovarian cancer at the age of thirty, a full hysterectomy, be menopausal and still feel my body as solid, home, my place of belonging. I love cracks in things, and the shadows behind things and the space between things.
And I love these women –Foxy, Noa, Zita, The Empress,- love this gathering of voices. Each of them speaks their truth and invites me to know this world through their knowing. Each of them holds up a mirror to me, inviting me to see myself through their eyes. It is stunning and tender in its vulnerability to be seen by such women, and it is like having the door opened, invited to come inside the fullness of my being. And this is what they say they see in me:
Lila, You are the Rowan Tree. Although I know you are made of fire, your bring me the magic of wood and earth. Simply put, you have been my partner in deeply understanding the mysteries of the universe. You enlarge perspectives to a cosmic, ever-expanding, mind-blowing level. ~ Foxy
Walks through the fire, fiercely
she holds space, contains
and loosens the voices
they tried to deafen
Unflinching mama
who sought out this connection
hungry for the real
Fucking the city
she drinks her lattes and writes
willing to seek truth
Wife, sister, daughter
the goddess and the nameless
she is teacher and student
reading the stories her body tells
circling the fire
crossing over
and coming home
~Noa
Lila, My most lovely friend …who had the courage to summon our friendship from the depths of her own private journey. Lila had the stoutheartedness to embrace my presence as she traversed one of life’s most powerful moments….for her. This takes fearlessness. My Siren, Lila is : fearless,bravura, prowess, dauntless, beautiful, sexy and amazing…she makes my jaw fall slack often and is the subject of many fantasies…if you can’t admit it, you’re lying. Her hair reminds me of a clover patch: wild, unscrupulous, curly and free. Her habits; I wish I could embrace them as my own – perhaps the next lifetime…hopefully Iwill embrace it with the grace that she has. She’s a fierce mother to George and even more compelling partner to Elliot. My breath catches when I read of her interactions – literally. Enchantress of words…soothsayer to all….medicine woman to her readers. ..I dream that she smells like cinnamon and has biceps capable of holding her own weight...something to which many of us cannot boast! She’s tall..she’s slender…she’s curvy…she’s bold…she’s forthright…she’s intuitive…she’s love. ~ Zita
Lila: Smokey, profound, sexual, intellectual, gritty, real, honest. Unafraid. She is a woman of altars and poster board, meditation and midnight bowling, slow cooked pork roasts and cereal for dinner. She is stripper poles and fort-builder. She is thoughtful, gift-giving, card-writing, package-sending. She is silver jewelry and wild hair you want to put your fingers into. She is mother and whore and sister. She is a life line, an organizer, a cleaner, a get-shit-done-er. She smells like perfume and scented candles and clean laundry. She is swanky and urban and earthy. She is coffee drinker and margarita sipper and ocean lover and clove smoker. Her laugh is worth all the gold in the world. ~ The Empress
So I am here, tonight, this new moon bringing with it all I have ever been, the cycles which have been circling in me forever, and bringing a beginning, as we enter this space of the Sirens’ Song. And it makes me happy.
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