Synchronicities on the road.....

“What might we see, how might we act, if  we saw with a webbed vision? The world seen through a web of relationships…....as delicate as spider’s silk,  yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”

Catherine Keller,  From a Broken Web 

I've spent so much of my life on the road, in transit to places ........... crossing the country to get to shows,  and often just following the roads of a restless spirit I may have inherited from my father, who moved our family across the country and around the world.   I suppose clinicians would diagnose me (as I think they would many creative types) as having a bad case of ADD (which I have a different perspective on anyway).  But I think, as the poet Bard Robin Williamson said, there are those who "find rest in journeying", and that state of being "in transit" is a special liminal zone where magic can happen, minds can open, and the Great Conversation can be more eloquent.  

So I've been traveling to Los Angeles, doing an exhausting guest artist appearance at the Renaissance Faire, and in the course of that trip some surprising synchronicities have occurred. 

"Changing Woman" (2014)

Since my mother passed away not yet 3 months ago, I feel much is changing , within and without.  I no longer am a caretaker, and see that role slipping away from me gradually like a skin peeling off - what's underneath feels rather brittle and hyper sensitive.  

I find I am impatient, and expressing anger in ways that I would not have done in the past - hence, for good or ill, various relationships have ended.  I think, perhaps, that with the passing of my mother, and really the end of my family (there is no extended family) I'm trying to change the "family karma", the roles and patterns, that have gone forward in me.  The dis-functional ones - along with this maturation process is genuine gratitude for all that my mother, my family, gave me as well. 

 The previous article I posted  reflects, perhaps,  some of the darker aspects of that self-examination.

I find that I am also trying to re-connect with, and evaluate, the projects, themes, and inspirations that  were so important to me in the past - apart from and before I became so involved with the concerns of caretaking.  My "Hands of Spider Woman Project", the Masks of the Goddess Collection.............what is authentic still, what is not?  What do I love? How must I simplify my life now to regain that passion, that excitement about my art?
Where are my "power leaks", how am I "vamped", my time and energy drained away so that what I love to do...........I don't do.    What am I doing that I think I "should" do, but don't really want to do anymore, and what "should" I be doing that genuinely gives me happiness.  In other words, it may also be time to stop being a sad saint, and be a happy camper instead.  

So my syncros.............

The Renfair is in Santa Fe Dam in Los Angeles, a beautiful park with an impressive view of the mountains that ring the city.  On the other side of the park  from the Faire is a nature walk, and an area I always return to when the show is not on.  It has beautiful indigenous plants, and a sandy area with a stone circle.   I walked into the circle, made some offerings, and created a circle and cross with some stones in the center, representing the 5 directions - a kind of prayer, a way of centering myself.


When the show opened the next day, my booth opened onto a sandy path, and in the heat and the hum of voices passing by, it can get rather hypnotic, unless I'm working with a customer. Sitting in the back of the booth, I noticed there was a man with a carved staff of some kind in front of my booth.  Right in front of my booth, in the sand, he made a circle with a cross in it with his staff in the sand!  I watched him do it, then he walked off and disappeared in the crowd.  

It was not only the symbol I had created the previous day, the symbol of the 4 directions, but this is also a Native American motif called "Spider Woman's Cross".

It occurs on prehistoric Mississippian amulets, in Pueblo pottery, and is woven into Navajo (Dine) rugs as a sacred motif representing Grandmother Spider Woman.  It is an ubiquitous symbol of balance, wholeness, unity. It's also a symbol I've explored in my own humble way with my projects exploring the mythologies of Spider Woman - because I feel She is very important for our time.  

So it gets better.  On Monday, after the Faire closed, I was leaving  L.A. via I-10.  Leaving L.A. is no small feat, as L.A. is huge, with many suburbs that go on for a good 50 miles.   I saw, near the exits for Fontana, a banner that caught my attention - I didn't have time to see the building it was attached to, but I'm assuming it was over a park of some kind.  It read:

SPIDER WOMAN'S LEGACY

Navajo Rugs (.............)

I couldn't read what else was on the banner, but SPIDER WOMAN'S LEGACY was in big letters, right there on the side of the freeway! Not only was it there, but rather amazing that I happened to be looking over to the other side of the freeway and saw it.

I see, according to Google, that there is an exhibit in San Bernardino country called "Spider Woman's Legacy: Navajo Rugs and Textiles,” 

In my experience, this is one of Spider Woman's favorite ways to communicate.......with synchronicities!

My last syncro occurred once I crossed the Arizona border, travelling east on I-10.  I had been thinking as I drove about the article I posted last on this Blog, about the meaning of Psychic Vampires.  And about, also, my personal efforts to grow out of a "victim stance" in my own life.  How I've missed so many opportunities, devalued my work,  sustained a great deal of loss because that sensibility is so deeply rooted in my family of origin.  How I've been kind of my own "vampire" by having that sensibility, and how it has to end now and here.

Seriously...........I was meditating at the wheel  on all of this and looked up to see an elaborately painted van in front of me.  It read:

KUNG FU VAMPIRE

www.kungfuvampire.com*

Well Damn!  What more affirmation do I need!  Just to make sure though, when I pulled up at a rest area an hour later, there was the van, right in front of me, again.

**

Kung Fu Vampire is apparently a gothic/punk rapper from San Jose, currently touring.  I looked up the site, which was pretty awful and dark not to mention misogynist.  Not my aesthetic, but I don't really need to listen to the music to get the message from the syncro.............