the girl from the sun

Could have swore it was while walking past the ivy-covered bus stop in front of the mental institution, but seeing it again the other day, the mosaic is actually on Mission and 5th. You can check it out for yourself, the mosaic in honor of the girl from the sun. The first time I walked by the mosaic in the city that indulges itself in autumn by stretching it into shades of Indian summer and samhain fog at all times of the year, most of my memories came flooding back.

It was the kind of old-fashioned library where you open the door to find yourself dwarfed by books wrapping all around you, although there was a clearly a spacious hall, almost like a courtyard in the middle. It was the stacks of books and the musty colors of their spines that swarmed you that I remember first after turning the doorknob.

It was the kind of two-story library you'd expect to be overlooking the sea at a stately university in Lisbon, or guarded by gargoyles, hidden behind a trap door in a 17th century masonic temple in the English countryside.

The second landing of books was flanked by a beautiful filigreed railing, a balcony for books and their lovers. And there were stairways leading to the top floor in the four directions.

At eight years old, I still had an appetite for book-learning and I yearned to flip through a few books from the second floor before I scurried back to rejoin the group which by now was probably onto the next room in the official tour.

I began to climb up one of the stairs closest to library entrance. Once my feet alighted on the first step it felt more like the staircase was whorling into a spiral staircase, spinning slightly as if I were climbing up a lighthouse at a point jutting into the sea. From the ground level, it seems a straightforward enough staircase. The kind that goes up (or, shall I make it a ladder for the story now that my memory is hazy or I'm not quite sure what it was since it was all so odd).

Once I recovered from the slight dizziness on the second floor, I noticed an end-table with glass-encased watchpieces. Like little cuckoo clocks entombed under an oblong glass cage except these weren't mechanical clocks at all. Contained within were orbs of neon light - I distinctly remember magneta, chartreuse and violet. But there could have been others like white, gold, and electric blue. There were also vials of glittering liquids that were on the verge of turning gaseous and seeping out from under the glass.

Something just told me these were timepieces although no tick-tock-tick marking of time was to be heard. Seeing these only served to remind me that I best be in a hurry so I can sneak back in with the tour. (I still entertained this fantasy in my mind that my parents hadn't noticed that I hadn't caught up with the group after the previous room - it's the one with the staircase to the ceiling. They were having a hard time with eighteen "unruly" - their words, not mine - kids, it's not like there was anything wrong with their eyesight. I was after all one of their own two kids.)

The first book I choose (I don't remember any of the other titles I skimmed and passed over) had a brilliant sun on the cover. The title on the spine was what caught my eye first, "The Girl from the Sun."

The books were illustrated almost in the style of comics - or what we might, if comics is too low-art for you, call these days graphic novels. Except the pictures weren't exactly pictures of knights in armor, or doe-eyed Japanese princesses or steampunk Willy Wonkas or anything we're familiar with in cartoons. They weren't really pictures at all but more like symbols.

I found I could read the symbols and long after I surmised they might have been written in some universal language, something more primal from the age of the Tower of Babel, that been long abandoned, yet latent as an acorn is a latent oak. They resembled Eygptian hieroglyphs to me at that moment because I just gotten a B+ on a book report on the Giza pyramid. That was a double bonus for me because I got to also talk about the Sphinx in that report.

As I turned the pages before me with each flick of my wrist I felt a light swoosh of a breeze. As was my custom even back then (I never begin a book at page 1) I stopped where it felt good to begin. Now this is the part of the story that I've told no one except Ava. It's enough to be a freak without peeps thinking I am a "Jesus freak." But I swear the page that entranced me at that moment was telling a story about Jesus hanging out at a city called Heliopolis. I could hear a melody that sounded like a blend of turtledove, grape vines growing in the sunshine and cypress wind chimes - something I'd never heard before or since - and it seemed to be arising out of the story.

I hadn't hardly absorbed but a handful of symbols on the page when I was overcome with a desire to visit this place they called Heliopolis. I looked away from the book to catch my breath, and that's when I noticed a little placard hung between where the two walls met in the library. When I tell this story now I just call it the sign at the crease.

Years and years later Rachel, an old girlfriend now, gave me the a copy of The Song of Songs. (Maybe she thought it was about music and songwriting...I've yet to this day figured out why she gave such an odd gift.) There are passages there that gave me something close to the feeling of a light breeze when the pages turn. This line particularly still brings on goosebumps, "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret of the stairs."

Nothing gave me chills as much as the day I walked by the mosaic again (I wasn't even paying attention as I was on my way to pick up a free iPod from a friend that already had two). Each time I walk by the mosaic more details fill, like the fact that the book was illuminated.

Anyhow, just a few minutes later I get this text message. (Now I know a thing or two about ghosts, and so this is a rather absurd way to communicate.) Don't worry it's saved, even though my phone can only handle twenty lousy messages in its memory.

July 18, 2007: "I, girl come from unnameable planet furthest from our sun in the galaxy. The name is like a song you can't pronounce in 3rd octaves. But sometimes when you are very still you can taste it."

Nice triggers for a new song, but I waved it off as a "wrong number" addressed to some other lucky bard since the number wasn't familiar, and I continued walking to meet up with J. About an hour later I got another:

"The girl from planet & (again from here we have no way to pronounce yet; like ice cream flavors not yet invented but we have craved) wants to know if u want to hear more of her tale."

Where credits due... painting of St. Petersburg by Maxim Nikiforovich Vorobiev. Strange never been outside USA (on one level that is), oh, yeah Vancouver... but this picture is so eerily familiar.

Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens

"Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens." - Whether Man, The Phantom Tollbooth

Partly because of the ol' Jonah complex, partly because the poetry has fluttered out of me like spaciousness seeps out of limp balloon. Dense writer's cramp.

The other day the human-sized sunflower practically had to yell at me to get me out of dead-end maze of my head.

Telepathic screams are different than you'd expect. Imagine you're a voodoo doll, raggedy-ann and all, and something gently turns you upside and quiverously shakes you like pepper by your ebony riveted goth boots. Next a whisper like a church bell at noon such as, "You who. (You who aren't here is the gist.) See this." Next you wonder where you've been all your life to have nearly missed the perfect phi petals of the yellowed yesterdays facing the fractal sun.

Truth. There's a reason I work with kids. & whales. & sound. I'm them. Came up with another one of my awenisms as I was sloughing off to slumber after the indulgent Indian extravanganza feast that puts you right into the dreamland of dakinis and dozing dosas. (alright, tired of being so secretive about my whereabouts, if you want to come next Wednesday to the meditation and meal, email me, you can suss out my gmail account pretty easy enough). Back to the Awenism is this:

All children are artists. All artists are children.

I'm too lithe and nimble to be keen on being tethered to a desk and flickering screen. Not my idea of traveling through the world. Give me seesaws. Swings. Stencils. Scissors. Sitars. Stickers. Synthesizers. Silliness. Screams. Sex. Siestas. That ball and chain computer (even laptop impedes my speed) is a decided downside to electronic harmonizing to be sure - yet it's worth it when it's bout making music.

I prefer to just live my life, and do what I came here to do best I can, than write this for peeps that already have the universe all mapped out neat and tidy in their matchbox cities.

Hear ye! Hear ye! Ephipany alert! I think I got to switch over and write this for 8-year-olds. I have half a chance of not abandoning the whole project then.

This is the one and only time I'm going to share what even gave me the ooomph to scribble all this down (You can probably tell writing is not my bag. Tho tall tales and spinning yarns is in my blood. Scratch that Celtic holier-than-thou-lineage nonsense. It's in my soul, which ain't got nothing to do with the Currie clan.)

So, my friend Evelyn sent me a strange email one of those nights she was up until four a.m. over a month ago, subject line: the light is contagious.

It was curious because last time we'd seen each other in person over by the yerba buena gardens granite fountain (gawd that's another story) i sang a new song (finally had rounded up the eight bucks to repair the broken string on the guitar that day I recall) I'd written that had a refrain "blindness is contagious." (Oh, yeah, I didn't sing by the roar of the fountain obviously, we moved closer to the merry-go-round. Metaphor of our lives.)

Wrote back, "Fear is contagious and the instinct to bow down, step out, not step up"

she apologized for the email when she woke up. said she'd accidentally sent it to me when she meant to send it to another friend. i guess our email addresses were just one alphabetical shuffle off in the gmail widgetry wizardry. i could tell she was embarrassed because it was too woo-woo for me. which isn't a big deal as i'm used to that fluff growing up with the parents i did.

what i didn't expect was the the message filled some gaps in the strange movies that were screening in and out of the theatre of my head. plus the foreign yet familiar signs and omens that were leaping out at me from lightpoles license plates locomotives labyrinths lacquered lairs lavendar fields latrines and lycraed lepers. Not that L has anything to do with it. Lyrics to the cosmos littered everywhere. It was hopping all over the alphabet.

i had to do a double-take. and with a deep sigh i realized i needed to get this out there. figured maybe that the Internet would be a magnet of its own. for those it's meant to magnetize

music accompaniment will come next. takes me longer to perfect. I don't want to fuck up music. (alright not so attached to the blog as I am particular about music) but ironically paradoxically time is of the essence, and time is simultaneously stacked one upon another like chairs in a corner against a concrete wall before a performance begins. One tall vertical column of nows. Soon enough time will de-rezz.

all right, sharing only a short section of a long winding trail that Evelyn claims to "accidentally" forward from Dr. Meg.

Excuse me for the extravagance of the explanation. Please suspend the yawns if like me you're so over the pop new age boomers. seek the clues for yourself . druids and bards don't lie, they spin the truth into palatable parables, but yeh Promise - from now on, writing to the kids. For the kids. They get it. (Just look at that artwork.) Biggest bonus is that if I imagine i'm talking to the kids I taught this summer, I won't bore my own self nevermind you.

"Coming in September of your time there is another major shift. This one is a different sort than those which we have previously talked about with you. On the fourteenth of September at 6:02 am eastern time there comes a breach in the fabric of creation. With this, in an early attempt to heal that breach, anti-matter fills the void which is created and there comes a vacuum effect.
As the vacuum effect initializes, there will be certain manifestations of balance required from the interior of your planet. This may take form in the nature of eventful sized earthquake activity. It will also take place in your weather patterning.

Within your bodies you will feel this shift even if you are only slightly aware, or barely aware, for as the void opens, releasing anti-matter, there comes a lightening of the cosmic energies which fill you. As the vacuum effect occurs, you are being filled with light energy. Cleansed, wiped clean. Initialized and initiated to the energies which follow.

That energy which follows is laden with the symbolic language of the infinite. It is both teacher and student, mother and child, peace and all that is not, love and its antithesis, desire and fulfillment.

The energy which comes with the language of the light will open within each of you avenues of consciousness which you had never conceived. Avenues which if you choose will bring you to greater being by virtue of your very existence. And those avenues will be filled with the instructions contained within the symbols. And the instructions will become you and you them.

What are the messages contained within the symbols. All that has ever been. All that can ever be, infinite possibilities at your disposal to change your experience and even the world in which you live. Infinite information to guide you toward brighter being, and the safety from within the One.

Until now most of you have seen yourselves as separate beings from within the entirety. This is not true you know? Separateness is mere perception in opposition of that which is timeless truth. You have sought to fill yourselves with those things which are not of worth except in measurable human terms. But what of that which lies beyond? What of those who have not? What of that which cannot co-create because it has been used up? Those things do not fill you but rather weigh you down with false security.

The truth in abundance is that it is all relative to the values you perceive. Just make certain that those values are yours and not belonging to others.

As the yin and yang of the void of the opening and the light which is pulled into you by that very destruction becomes assimilated within you there will be another great wave of energy which moves through your local reality carrying with it an encodement which is of the patterning of the divine.

The encodement is, for lack of language in your world, a road map to your very states of divinity.
As the planets within your solar system continue their journey toward the original beginning point, the galactic center, the light within you becomes magnified. The earth then begins to respond as well. That which is your very being responds in turn and you can either allow yourselves to be carried with the flow, or find yourselves tossed in the conundrum of chaos as the edges of the vortex are of a violent nature as the energies are being pulled in one of the most dramatic trans-dimensional changes which has ever occurred. As the tear in the fabric of creation fills with anti-matter and you are filled with light in turn, the dimensional barriers will begin to cross, become entangled temporarily and time as you know it will become confusing to say the least. At least for a cosmic now. Your realities may begin to open, even to the point of temporary confusion. Do not let this concern you. Know that beyond your current perception there are vast worlds of living breathing color and life. Many of them are aware of you. Most of them have contacted you at some point, or others in your world, with messages of peace, the lessons of the infinite and love embodied.

As you seek all that is holy, all that is sacred, remember that that which is most sacred is you. You are all and everything that you seek and within you are universes enfolded, all things possible and light beyond imagining.

Be in peace. Ride with the flow.

Anhalle ensi entui ansitu anshalla"

where credits due...from the mouth of babes (k, college students, hoorah for the racoon collective) the garden of eden fig sticker's titled "2012 is now" (look closely); then this wheat paste gem's intention is to open the heart (the kids will rule the world, amen)

eclipses and cats

eclipse tonight out here, probably on your planet too

mideclipse around 3:33 a.m. ish

too many endings, that's what eclipses do - clear out - to really do this storytelling justice in my frame of mind - well i can't.

here's to hoping tomorrow i can start at the beginning, which i'm not sure where that'd be, maybe begin gently. the tale of when Ava was playing with the spectres of children past, like steamerpunk on steriods, on the verdigris painted lawn of the sarah winchester house when we were kids, before i got lost beyond the crease in room number 123.... but now for a word from our sponsor:

"I left the humans that very day, to spread the good news. And now I travel from place to place. I have walked for leagues beyond measure. I have starved, sometimes, and often I have been hurt. But I have walked on.

In a metal machine I crossed the cold waters. I have preached to solitary feral cars in empty places. I have shouted my message to the stars from rooftops and whispered it to dying cats in alleyways.

I have spoken to one cat, and to many. And wherever I have gone, my message is the same...

Dream it!

Dream the world. Not this pallid shadow of reality. Dream the world the way it truly is. A world in which all cats are queens and kings of creation. That is my message." - A Dream of a Thousand Cats, The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman

where credits due...art from spiritmythos.org

milky way white crystal city anyone?

though this profound sadness that washes over me like tide cresting, ebbing the last few days, uh weeks, probably has something to do with lack of motivation. naw, it's not that i watched J pack for black rock city yesterday - and I'm not going (again). never been a burner, though reckon it's really a modus operandi not a ten-day vacation where you go back to your tidy 'real life' after the Man flames out. so in that regard i'm a burner.

not sure if it's about the 14th, or it's a sign it's time to pack up again (seeing as i'm not exactly walking distance to the ocean)

p.s. My very first twitter linked to that photo above, though beats me why this blog shite is cropping it - that's a whole whale structure there.

Thar she blows light! Light spheres. i hear their frequencies their wailing porous hum penetrating my cells their sonic hymns, though others may see them. And if all that fails, the camera, like kids, still sees what it sees. (love to see your photos from this year's gypsum gypsy oasis city in the desert, or anything with whales, and light dancing to tunes...)

While looking for some cover art, Googled "whale art." Cool photo from Burning Man. Whale sculpture. Nice orbs. http://tinyurl.com/386n2c 10:43 PM August 17, 2007 from web

sundays sitars squats

Sundays i have the whole place to myself.

yeh wednesdays (nights) are also very cool. that's when the family that owns this warehouse invites their extended network (i swear they come out of the woodwork) over for light yoga (light being the key word, the floors aren't carpeted or of gentle hardwoods, so) and meditation.

then we chow down on some incredible Indian food. my favorite's that rice pudding dessert as it reminds me so of the food on the other side of the crease.

one day i'd like to suggest maybe some sitar and tabla too, but hey it's their baby.

the rest of the week it's a little like living in a hostel (but without the deja vu of running into wonderers and wanderers you've travelled with in some other galaxy). gotta be out during the day - that's when they dye the saris red, white, and blue - or whatever it is they actually do with the textiles they're importing. we don't chat about business, so that's a mystery. funny we don't talk about the family business.

sitars, now that i mention it, the ocean in India, the Ganges, the way the thick air in summer in India makes everything shimmer copper, the hill that led to the top of the temple in their town, the stories from their childhood about great grandma's ghost, wholy herbs like tulsi, the secret to making a killer masala chai, the kali yuga, the vedas

wish you could meet them too should you be in the neck of the woods on wednesdays, but dare not whisper their names.

that was years ago to be sure, but still remember when she blew the whistle on our squat. so i'm more cautious now. it's just a room, and there's a toilet. but it ain't exactly street legal to be living in the warehouse district. as long as i'm gone during the workday mondays through saturdays while they're working here, it's mine

p.s. time to gather my pennies, hop on BART and head out across the bay to that city of the pigeons. totally been avoiding both the search for the grotto (if you know someone with a scanner, i can show you the photo the Mayan kid gave me) and/or Miss Angeline's house on Folsom. certainly can't use working at Camp as any excuse any longer.

where credits due...Les Anges et Demons de La Grande-Allée 400 ans de Kebec City by Yan D. Soloh

camino del alma

Tough week with camp ending and all. (Excuses for not getting with this online schtick.) I'm trying to maybe punctuate capitalize more, but I can't promise it'll stick.

Started talking about Chiron yesterday on twitter. But didn't have time to finish out the writing on this here blog. That half-man, half-centaur up there is a pictorialization of Chiron.

Two things I twittered bout Chiron that amount to anything (and believe it or not, found on a new-agey site):

He taught his students how to access multidimensionality and balance polarization and duality.

The wound will be opened in order to gain the wisdom necessary to help heal self and others of physical or psychic pain.

Wounded healers make good shamans, if nothing else. Chiron's mom abandoned him when she saw he wasn't up to the snuff of gods like old pop Saturn. He grew up an orphan.

Anyhow, yesterday was one of those days where I rubbed at the scar. Accidentally. Now can't even remember why I thought of Ava. Probably the way one of the girls handed me a clump of clay and scurried off to her next adventure. Yeah, there's an Ava in the camp even. But she doesn't look a smidge like Ava. Now Grace is the spitting image of her. Gypsy coin bounce to her gait, raven feathered tresses, enigmatic depths when you fall into the pools of her eyes.

She was nineteen years old when we lost her to the sea. Funny, just struck me Chiron's mom was a sea nymph too.

Thus began the one hundred frosty years of the White Witch's reign in Narnia. I'm a fire sign so you think bitter rage against that numb god would bring it on. Nope. It's like that other bardic dude Frost said (Frost, frost: can you believe all the word puns), "Some say the world will end in fire; Some say in ice."

I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

After the thaw though I gradually became like a hearth. (I learned my Mayan sign from Fernando when I lived in the Mission. He hangs out with Clemento who raves about my ankh tattoo as if he's never seen it a million times before. So yeah Fernando gave me those cheesy glittery purple mardi gras beads two weeks ago that I laced over the real mardi gras beads I got in Nola. Hanging on the mirror now. Purple. Emerald. Gold.)

After the thaw it's when I started messaging with whales and dolphins, and started synthesizing their songs into mine. It keeps me keeping on, and playing with sis.

Full name, by the way, is Avalon. And of course, if you've figured out mom and dad's codex by now, you'd know her middle name's Étaín.

where credits due.... Camino Del Alma (in English roughly, The Soul's Walkway) by Ikun and
http://www.animetionink.com/images/portfolio/centaur-fs.jpg

where are you from

the kids were a bit cranky today

the end of camp time, summer time, the time for innocent silliness, rising to meet them - friday to be precise

when did being a kid become so serious???

anyhow, my friend told me to be online i have to establish some cred

you don't know me from any other raving stark mad mutant musician walking through walls out there

so here goes, in yuppieland i think the question du jour is WHAT DO YOU DO
it occured to me watching the guy in khaki sweatshirt at the bus stop this morning rubbing his two pennies together nervously while asking the pretty russian lady with the four five bags jostled around her that around here, we mostly ask as a way of breaking the ice WHERE ARE YOU FROM

k, maybe start there, Awen...

yeah, that's really my real name. not used to this public to the whole wide galaxy disclosure thing, so i'll just start you with my first and middle name: Awen Mihir

that right there tells you plenty where i'm from.

mom and dad are kinda of hippie gaelic pagan. santa cruz. grew up mostly thereabouts. don't have much to say about my parents except you should know they emphatically did NOT do lsd - way too synthetic for them if you get the drift. they went right to the roots, man. herbs. mushrooms were big. you'd think they'd invented the printing press when the book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross came out

it took me maybe all of six years of age to realize that i was trippier than they were. AND more mature at the same time. since that time i got lost when i separated from the other kids at the sarah winchester house.

mom and dad were babysitting plenty of neighbor kids that field trip (some kind of rotating coop thing so adults didn't croak from responsibility of juggling so many delusions and diapers).

it's no mystery why kids under 9 years old aren't allowed in parts of the mansion any more. kids can still see what they see.

that's a long winded way of finally coming around to fact that i certainly don't feel i fit into my hometown. so it doesn't feel right to spit out Santa Cruz when someone asks that proverbial question where are you from.

bloodlines mean less and less to me every single dreaming and waking moment.

this is where my soul lines are from:

"In the hollow hills of Ireland, in the lacy margin where the Atlantic tide touches the shore, on the islands just beyond sight off the western coast, lies a country invisible to most human eyes, a country called Tir na nÓg - the Land of Youth. Life in this Otherworld flows and eddies much like life in Ireland, except that to all of the strife and clamor, love and jealousy of the mortal world is added the shimmering loveliness of the fairy realm." - from Étaín

where credits due...Yoshitaka Amano