David Whyte, and Storms...........

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

David Whyte 

Already too many years ago I went to visit a friend who was living in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, in that humid climate I developed  asthma, probably from mold,  and couldn't stay in her home, but had to stay in a hotel in order to visit her.  There, in a mostly deserted resort hotel by the ocean I encountered a Tropical Storm.   Today, for some reason, I'm again remembering that friend, Felicia, and that day of the Storm I met in Puerto Rico.  

My life in Tucson is mostly placid, that is, except for Monsoon Season, when the great (and beloved)  Monsoon clouds come rolling in, announcing themselves with thunder, lightning, and a downpour that swiftly comes and goes, leaving a refreshed and cooled desert. 

But the Tropics.  The tropics, it seems to me, are where life  is at its most vibrant, virulent, creative, predatory, colorful, and destructive. Life in the tropics teems.   It's impossible to be in the midst of that potency of life and not become intoxicated with it. Intoxicated or terrified, take your choice. In retrospect, experiences can be viewed as  kind of like meals. How did they TASTE? Did they fill, is the fragrance still with you?  Were they spicy, sweet,  or bitter, making one slow, dull, digestive?  The fragrance of Puerto Rico, like the taste of Bali, will always still be with me. 

                                    "The world is not with us enough - oh taste and see" 

The poet Denise Levertov wrote, and it's too often true.  How often do we stop, in the midst of this Feast of life, to really "taste and see"? 

On the Day of the Storm, I remember I had a room with a balcony at the top of a hotel  in Rincon. I arrived  off season, and it was already largely deserted, and especially with the prospect of a tropical storm advancing.  I  felt like a character from Stephen King’s “The Shining”, with a whole hotel to myself at night, empty bars filled with the ghosts of bands and booze and laughter and sex.  An empty blue pool with palm frond chairs upturned.  And wind, wind, wind moving leaves of palm trees,  the wet, heavy tropical air, wind blowing over wicker tables. 

As the sun went down, the storm advanced across the dark ocean, and the lights went out.  There were no candles, or even an attendant to ask about candles.  Just me on the second floor, looking out at the vastness of an endarkened ocean. 

So, there I sat in the state of Storm, with nothing to do but witness.

I do not think I shall ever forget that intense heavy silence, or the sounds of the koki frogs.  A woman called for her dog in Spanish,  “Limon, Limon!” as I watched the sudden illumination of lightning as it revealed an advancing mass of  clouds, rolling in from the distant ocean.  I was awed by the truth of that moment, our lives, our plans, our hopes and imaginations of "what is" - existing in the brief moments between  storms.

 

 

I know that sometimes

your body is hard like a stone

on a path that storms break over,

embedded deeply

into that something that you think is you,

and you will not move

while the voice all around

tears the air

and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes unawares

those sounds seem to descend

as if kneeling down into you

and you listen strangely caught

as the terrible voice

moving closer

halts,

and in the silence

now arriving

whispers

Get up, I depend on you utterly.

Everything you need

you had 

the moment before

you were born.

~ David Whyte ~

(Where Many Rivers Meet)

~ David Whyte ~

(Where Many Rivers Meet)

For Earth Day - the Homeric Hymn to Gaia

Gaia Icon  (2026)

 

Homeric Hymn XXX to Gaea 

translation by Evelyn-White

I will sing of the well-founded Earth, Mother of all, eldest of all beings:

She feeds all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly land, all that are in the path of the seas, and all that fly; all these are fed of her store.

Through you, O Queen, we are blessed in our children, and in our harvest and to you we owe our lives.  Happy are we who you delight to honor! 

We have all things abundantly: our houses are filled with good things, our cities are orderly, our sons exult with feverish delight. (May they take no delight in war) Our daughters with flower-laden hands play merrily over the soft flowers of the field.           (May they seek peace for all peoples)

Thus it is for those whom you honor, O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit!

Hail Earth, Mother of the Gods, 

 freely bestow upon us for this our song that cheers and soothes the heart!

 

The MASKS OF THE GODDESS Workshops from March and April, 2026

Masks from the Beginner's Class  (including my own Spider Woman mask)

I'm delighted to share (with permission of my students) the results of the two 4 day residential Intensive Workshops I taught at my Studio-Enclave in Tucson, Arizona the past two weeks.  The first class was a "Reunion" class, and it was wonderful to have students from last year's Workshop return to make more masks, and to enlarge their vision, with new masks, and new stories about the masks.

The second class was equally as prolific, both in the work they produced and what the visioning revealed individually and for the group through the process of the masks.  I'm delighted indeed, and intend to offer the same classes again next year.  Bravo to the Mask artists of this year!

“We give our mythic side scant attention these days and so a great deal escapes us and we no longer understand our own actions.  In most cultures, theatre and dance are considered holy rituals, but in the United States, these arts have become strangely secular.”

Leslie  Saxon West,  Choreographer, METAMORPHOSES (The myths of Ovid)

Masks from the Reunion Class (including my own Spider Woman mask)

"Grandmother Moon" by Sue Ellen Parkinson

"Crow Woman" by Ananda

"Flora" by Patty West

"Mask of Time" by Chaya Kornreich

 “Creativity is the Blue Heron within us waiting to fly;

 through her imagination, all things become possible.”

 Nadia Janice Brown

'The End of the Known World "

 

In 2014 I made a  blog for my friend Nigelle, also known as Zoe, who walked the Camino de Santiago at the age of 68. I greatly admire her journey, and so often wish I had also walked the Camino, taken that Pilgrimage myself.  

The scallop shell is the symbol of the Camino, pointing the way all along the long pilgrimage route.   After achieving the great Cathedral at  Compostella, many pilgrims then continue on to Finisterre, which in English means  "Lands End", where they finish their pilgrimage before the vastness of the Atlantic ocean.   For some reason this beloved poem by David Whyte has haunted me today.  I think, sometimes, the ancient Sanskrit philosophers were right when they wrote that at old age, one should leave behind the old life and pursuits, and enter into Pilgrimage, physically or spiritually (however one wishes to look at it).  Toward the Compostella of your dreams that calls to you.  

Or, perhaps, to go just a bit farther at last, to Finisterre..........."Because now, you would find a different way to tread, and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,  no matter how........."

FINISTERRE

The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now

but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water,

going where shadows go,

no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags;
to sort this and to leave that;

to promise what you needed to promise all along
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge,

not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all,
part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves.”

― David Whyte

 

**Photos by Zoe D'Ay

Masks for the New Year: The Persistance of Butterflies

 

                                   "A Mask for the Far Journey" (2025)

My own exhibit of masks (and a painting called "Seeing in the Dark")  at the Visionary Art Show  I curated with Stevens Gallery Director Betina Fink.  Butterflies, it seems to me, are a hopeful symbol of transformation.......the thing about masks is, you put them on, and then they reveal their story. 

 

"A Mask for Crossing Dimensions" (2023)

"A Mask for Becoming Lighter" (2022)

"A Mask for the Shattering of Old Paradigms" (2024)

"A Mask for the Reconciliation of Opposites" (2025)

"A Mask for Talking With the Ancestors" (2024)

"A Mask for Chaos and for Order" (2024)

"A Mask for Composting Old Dreams" (2025)

For a Very Troubled Time: "The Curse of the Morrigan"

 

I have been feeling, as many have, overwhelmed with the chaos, violence, fear and destruction that is going on in our country as Trump and his sycophants, and surely the monied oligarchy behind him, has and is creating.  I don't need to reiterate the loss of social services, the unstable economy, the repression of ICE, and the loss of our democracy and standing in the world community this has brought, in such a short time.  This morning I call for the Justice of the Morrigan.

It makes me ill to see the way lies and deception, greed with no limits, has poisoned our lives.  I wonder so often, how is it possible that we have such corruption, how is it possible everyone doesn't see "the Law of One", the truth that all of us, including all the other Beings on this beautiful planet, are interdependent?  That what is done to another is ultimately done to each of us as well?  How is this not obvious?  

I've always loved this poem, which seemed to erupt from me when I was creating a mask for the Celtic Goddess of battle, justice, and lamentation in 1999.  The message is about the entwinement of all experiences, a call to re-member that the real battle is the evolution of our souls into compassion and love, that fundamental evolutionary truth, especially now.  I guess that's why, when I put together this collage to illustrate the poem, the threads of the Web had to be manifest in the drawing.    

The CURSE OF THE MORRIGAN

You who bring suffering to children:

​May you look into the sweetest, most open eyes, and howl the loss of your innocence.

You who ridicule the poor, the grieving, the lost, the fallen, the inarticulate, the wounded children in grown-up bodies:

May you look into each face, and see a mirror. May all your cleverness fall into the abyss of your speechless grief, your secret hunger, may you look into that black hole with no name, and find....the most tender touch in the darkest night, the hand that reaches out. May you take that hand. May you walk all your circles home at last, and coming home, know where you are.

You tree-killers, you wasters:    May you breathe the bitter dust, may you thirst, may you walk hungry in the wastelands, the barren places you have made. And when you cannot walk one step further, may you see at your foot a single blade of grass, green, defiantly green. And may you be remade by it's generosity.

And those who are greedy in a time of famine:  May you be emptied out, may your hearts break not in half, but wide open in a thousand places, and may the waters of the world pour from each crevice, washing you clean.

Those who mistake power for love:  May you know true loneliness. And when you think your loneliness will drive you mad, when you know you cannot bear it one more hour, may a line be cast to you, one shining, light woven strand of the Great Web glistening in the dark. And may you hold on for dear life.

Those passive ones, those ones who force others to shape them, and then complain if it's not to your liking:

May you find yourself in the hard place with your back against the wall. And may you rage, rage until you find your will. And may you learn to shape yourself.

And you who delight in exploiting others, imagining that you are better than they are:

May you wake up in a strange land as naked as the day you were born and thrice as raw. May you look into the eyes of any other soul, in your radiant need and terrible vulnerability. May you know yourSelf. And may you be blessed by that communion.

                   And may you love well, thrice and thrice and thrice,
                   and again and again and again
                   May you find your face before you were born.

                   And may you drink from deep, deep waters.

"Dreams, Deities and Archetypes" - an Exhibit of Visionary Artists

 

"DREAMS,  DEITIES  &  ARCHETYPES"

 Inspired by  Carl Jung's Red Book   the Southern AZ Friends of Jung (SAFOJ) presents  An Exhibition of Visionary Artists, in collaboration with Tucson's  STEVENS GALLERY  located at 1545 East Copper Street, Tucson, AZ  January 31  through April 21, 2026.

THE OPENING is  February 7  (6 to 8 pm)  with a  performance by Nanette Robinson &  ZUZI! Dance! at 7 pm.  To View the Show online:    Full Catalog with an Introduction by  Lauren Raine.

The Exhibit has works by over 20 of Tucson's Visionary artists:  ​

Judith Austen, Barbara Brandel, Madeleine Charron, Mary Theresa Dietz,  Suzanne Ellenbogen, Betina Fink,  Nina Halvax, Lisa Hastreiter-Lamb, Patrick Hynes, Kathy Keler, Carolyn King, Ingrid McCarty, Arnold Nelson, Michael Pellegrino, Lauren Raine,  Maria Renee, Kelly Sinclair, Carmen R. Sonnes, and  Linda Valdez

                                                                    Join us!