Offers to Raven: Monday, November 29, 2010

Monday, November 29, 2010

04/21/2005 - 1st

M____,

you arrive with

your craziness

around your head

like a net

or a hat.

You have good manners -

you remove it,

when you arrive.

04/21/2005 - 2nd

Tonight M____ ,

you are so centered!!

Here you're doing,

your dance around,

your centered being.

04/21/2005 - 3rd

Here you are

taking the net

off your body,

dropping

the ghosts!

This is the fourth of four made this very special evening with M____.

This little waif of a creature, who talks of her insomnia and her madness, who has this loving charm about her.

The more she speaks of her madness, the more I realize she's sane and well.

Here you are as an icon to be loved and respected. Even worshipped.

05/09/2005 - Last work with M S_

M____ came over on a Monday evening impatient to make some works with the wet brush. I had in the morning rolled out and stretched a large piece of Stratmore watercolor, and also tinted it a light yellow and pink.

The drawing made from the first piece from the roll - that's why it's rounded at the top - anyway I was ready, and M____ was crazy to do some big wet powerful works.

Using the big elk hair brush I put out the red lines, then the same brush to apply a brownish black. Then I opened up the tumeric that Ami had made up for me and I asked M____ where she thought I should put it. I told her that tumeric helps the body remove poisons and blockages, and helps it generate internal heat. She started saying things like, I feel cold here, and pointing to her neck, so I would then apply some tumeric to the neck area. Then she said she felt cold in the belly, so I put some there. The whole center of the body ended up smeared with tumeric. Then I opened up the coffee and made coffee stains around the whole body. M____ drinks a lot of coffee at school.

After M____ left I did some 'repair' work. This is when I reconstruct lines that got smeared or blotted out in order to make the work go faster. We're not always able to give it enough time to dry. I do this by standing next to the drawing as if I'm actually standing over M____ herself at that moment, and feeling the natural arcs that my arm can make, redoing the lines. It's almost as easy as tracing her body again as if she were there. But as this act does depart from the unbiased unconcious discipline of making a tracing, and turns the look and the feel of the work over to a painterly energy which is somewhat subjective, I'm careful not to overdo.

Next time it will be back to lines, back to overlapping brown or sienna lines with the small brush.

11/29/2010 - Twins, for Thanksgiving

[This is an email correspondence between myself and a young woman who modeled for me twice, back in 2005. S____, who was working at the time as a yoga teacher, came to my Houston Street studio, one chilly April day.

After some false starts and small talk, in which we mentioned Ganesh, the Indian elephant-headed deity of guidance, I embarked on a tracing of her as she performed her sun salutations. This was the result.

Seeing the image of Ganesh emerge almost automatically from a pattern of some six yoga poses traced in sequence gave me pause to think for a long time about what lies inside all human minds. And S____ too, returned to her life encouraged by a force that she had proved radiated from inside her.

Since that moment we've both felt linked, as if by a bolt of light. We've stayed in touch, intermittently, but have not seen each other since those days of work.]

**************************

Friday November 26, 2010

S_____,

This is from my journal of Wednesday November 24, 2010:

"I fell asleep, exhausted as soon as I got back from picking up my son in Lakeville, and daughter in Northhampton. I headed back to New Haven with both dear children in the car, after months of their absence. They are no longer children really. Grown up. In college. We were talking a storm, but I was exhausted, and near the end of our trip had to slap myself every three minutes to stay awake.

As soon as we reached home I crashed, (without crashing!), and woke up five hours later, with the fierce memory of a dream pounding in my brain:

“Stephan-i-son NOAR”. That was the dream.

Working with my son later that evening, to prepare for Thanksgiving, I had a flash.

'It means my model friend S___ Stephanson had a son!' "

Now I look at your FaceBook page and realize you had two sons!

I send them both my love!

Mark

-:-

November 28, 2010

Dear Mark.

Thank you so much for sharing this.

These boys have been sent to me for some reason and this is yet another confirmation of that... there have been many signs from my environment. It is quite a challenge for us these days but i believe it was meant to be. There have been so many signs beginning with an image of a pregnant ganesh that i saw when i was at a memoir writing retreat last summer at Omega NY. This is equally potent and affirmative. I will include our work together and this dream/word sequence as as part of the chapter/section as well.

But what do you make of 'NOAR'?

Please be careful in your car. Enjoy your children. thank you for staying in touch my friend.

with love from all of us,

S____, E____, and R____

-:-

November 28, 2010

S____! . .

Thanks so much for getting back . . . I knew the dream was important when I had it. I actually felt extremely tired . . . almost fell asleep at the wheel right before having it. . . woke up very rested with these phrases beating my brainpan.

That's the way it is with my dreams. . . they boil down to words . . . sometimes seeming to make no sense.

I believe that the dream "Stephan-i-son NOAR" meant (to me) "Stephanson's Son, No ER!". I learned a lot about the Muse in work after we worked . . and that she does not care at all about spelling, for herself.

Sounds are it, as in, Sans-krit.

So 'NOAR' . . . sounds like 'No ER' meaning, it's 'S____'s Son, no ER', meaning, no emergency, i.e. good news!

My Muse very politely was telling me not to worry. I have a brother, named Steven, who has a son named Steven. The father, (my brother) flies small planes, and the son is a avid cliff climber (sometimes with no rope). I worried that the dream was about them, then I realized you were due, and it must be an announcement dream!

My family worries a lot about the two Stevens. So my Muse may have been specifying that it was you. . . . and that there was no need to worry.

You may have an insight about 'NOAR' later. . if you do please let me know. If I do I will also.

Until then, and always, we remain psychically linked! By Ganesh!

Are the boy's names E____ M____ and R____ M____? Middle names? Also I'm curious about the childbirth. Was it long? At a hospital or at home?

Not sure if you're aware, but R____ K_____, . . . my FB friend, and model to me at about the same time as you, also had twins, a few years ago. There's some writing here about her, and the process of discovering the poetry on my blog somewhere. You might like to share this experience with her.

Same love from me here to you . . . blessings . . . you look great. . my heart soars like a hawk.

Mark

-:-

November 29, 2010

Wow. I am more blown away than before, again thank you for sharing with me. I will meditate on 'NOER'. What you have intuited sounds on the money though.

E___ R____ M___ and R___ D___ M____ are their names.

The birth was a very western MD affair complete with a c-section and 4 day hospital stay. R___ was nearly 7 lbs at birth, breach and posterior to E___. His head was up by my rib cage. During the birth he had to be wrangled from me feet first and part of his cord was beginning to wrap around his neck. There was no way to deliver safely vaginally. I was bummed out about that, but didn't want to risk attempting a vaginal birth and having to go completely under for a c-section later. E___ was low and head-down. I have a 8 minute or so birth video that S____ took if you want to see it. Just let me know. It's pretty amazing! I have recovered quickly though, and feel blessed for the excellent care we all received.

R___ K____ sounds familiar. She had twins too? Something about working with you perhaps?! I will get in touch with her.

Thank you my friend for continuing to be a guardian angel from afar and for staying in contact. We remain linked!

love,

S____ and the boys.

-:-

November 29, 2010

S____,

I'm so happy it all turned out well, there was a sort of ER after all, but I was being reassured.

I have even more to share with you . . .

This is from dreaming last night! My internet went dead very late. . . so I was prevented from reading this post of yours, which probably helped me in realizing what the dream meant.

First, I was also a difficult birth. Extremely so. I was born during a full lunar eclipse (just learned that bit last month when I was researching eclipses!). My umbilical cord wrapped around my head, also I kicked it and ruptured it, so they had to reach in and pull me out.

As I was going to sleep last night my dreams woke me up. In it I saw 'NOAR' as a picture of an elephant walking, from the side, he's facing right.

'N' is his hind legs, (the 'V' of the 'N' is the hind leg closest), 'O'' is his belly, 'A' and the first part of the 'R' his front legs, the right part of the R is his head and trunk!

Shiva is said to have cut the head off an elephant in order to replace the one taken from his son. . . . in that case it would be the 'R' that gets lopped off and placed on Ganesha's body!

"No R!"

So the dream is the story of a death (of an elephant, but the birth of a God, Ganesh. So there you have it. . . Ganesh was telling us the story of his life! And it couldn't have been easy!

Also . . . 'Stepan-i-son' rhymes with . . 'El-e-phant'!

You had two sons. So did Shiva and Parvati. One was named Kartikeya, or Skanda, the other Ganesha. It is not certain which was born first. In the South of India they say Ganesh is older, in the north, Skanda.

My congratulations to your husband. This is a very auspicious birth.

S____, . . . might I put this conversation (editing out your first name and the boys names and your husband S____'s name) on my blog?

Sometimes messages like this help others realize that their dreams are not nonsense, and can be understood.

If you'd prefer not, please understand, I don't mind at all.

Love to Parvati, Shiva, Skanda and Ganesh,

Mark

-:-

November 29, 2010

Mark,

Just after the retreat, i found a child's stuffed monkey puppet toy in a cab -- between a visit from S____ to NYC and a month's hiatus for me in MN (august), I had a feeling that could be an omen. I found out i was pregnant 3 weeks later, when i was in MN. We made the incredibly tortuous decision to terminate that pregnancy. He wasn't ready to commit to me on that level and it turns out (i found out much later) he wasn't being/hadn't been faithful either for a lot of our two years together long distance.

I had a vision of the pregnancy the month prior (before conception), at Omega -- that this child would be a reincarnation of his brother C___. I was running in the July heat, on a rural back road surrounding the Omega site, and came across a mailbox that said 'C____ K____' which i immediately knew as 'C____ coming'. at the same moment of seeing the mailbox, i had the strong sense of a child coming to S____ and me.

I terminated it out of fear... i didn't want to be a single mother in NYC and he wasn't embracing me or the possibility of making a family with me in MN. I never really recovered from that -- and returned to NYC thoroughly broken. I decided to move to MN for my sanity, and the paradox was that it didn't have to do with S____ but with the fact that NYC would destroy me if i stayed any longer in the face of so much pain. I also had made a few friends in MN and knew I could make a life apart from S____ if it came to that.

We had a turbulent year end in '09 but we stayed /persevered together; and by march '10, i was pregnant again. I hoped it was the soul of the little one who came to us in summer '09. when i found out there were two of them, I felt more certain that one of my sons in my uterus was in fact the same being we weren't ready for nearly 9 months earlier. I conceived at the same time that being would have been born. A tarot reader at the renaissance fair in MN at august's end, after the termination, in '09, foretold this.

But now i wonder... 'NOER'? Is the son i was supposed to have in march '10 not in fact E____ or R____? Is that creature still out there? Is it safe? Are my two boys E___ and R____ safe?

Do let me know your thoughts when you have a chance.

Of course you may use our correspondence in your blog. What is the site/address? I would love to follow it.

S______

-:-

November 29, 2010

Dear S____,

I'm reading this very carefully will probably have more ideas later today.

I do think a lot of this is about the naming of your children.

Also, feeling guilt about a terminated pregnancy, is common to all mothers. You are a mother feeling guilt about that, because you are a mother, whereas if you hadn't become a mother, you might not be feeling this. You, as a mother are a creator of life. . . and as such you have the right to chose when to do it.

Trust yourself. You did the right thing. Remember Ganesh has been leading you right along, . . ever since you took up yoga, probably from way before.

"N-O-O-O-A-A-A-R", is the sound an elephant makes when bellowing!

Hanuman bears gifts of fortune. You can't keep souls that are destined to live, from living. No one can.

Everyone on this planet has dreams, or almost everyone. Few get the chance to sort through their content. Almost in compensation, dreams have many, and multiple meanings. Your dreams are important to me, and vice versa.

'Noar', also comes from the Hebrew root word (nun-ayin-resh) which translates to "enlightened". Besides "noar", other forms of this Hebrew root word (nun-ayin-resh) have it in the form Naar (Mostly Sephardim, or Romaniotim) and Noor (Ashkenazim), rarely 'Naor'. [fr. www.urbandictionary.com also has a very unappealing 2nd meaning not cogent to this!]

We'll get this one right. And we'll make sure your kids are safe. I'll help watch over them. You look well S____, so I'm not worried!

Also please come back to your old hometown, and visit. Bring everyone. We would love to meet you all, and we could all head down to Pepe's!

Mark

[another tale of Twins]

04/15/2005 - M____

The first time M____ came over she brought her boyfriend. The young woman whose photograph I was emailed, was of fair but almost bruised complexion, a sign of depression. She had an energy, a fire and a flame burned from the back of her head, and out in front of her, something she was walking towards, some light that she saw to guide her out of some very dark place.

I welcomed the two of them in. He was awkward, and acted like he was imposing, but after all they both wanted to know that my motivations were pure. He saw the work and took encouragement, and so he smiled and left her with me.

-:-

M____ comes over. It is daylight, how much younger and sweeter she seems at night. She confesses she is crazy, first week of the new term at P____, . . . she’s very agitated. Yet she seems to want to strip and lie down and relax as my brush goes all around her. . . not sexual at all . . . it goes where it must, the work. I chose a big brush, load it up with dark ink, and make a pattern drawing, with about six positions. It has mass and power.

Then I decide to make it wet. I load up the pot with a witches brew of black ink. 'M____ we’re going to do it quickly, very quickly all around and I want you to change poses quickly, from one to the other, and we will see what comes.'

'Please use red, Please use red!" M____ asked me to use some color, so I did.

The drawing ends up as a murky mess, with a pile of red in it – after we switched colors. Giggling she goes into the shower to wash off.

Is red, the color of energy, beginning to transform her pathways?

-:-

I've had this dawing in the studio for nearly a month, have looked at it many times, yet only when photographed did I realize that, like the earlier one, M____'s hands and feet are poking out of a giant tangle, like she's trapped in some eternal barbed wire.

Her hands shoot skyward out of the mess of red and black.

She's working through nerves that are turned back on themselves, insisting on the straight route of light, . . up!

Ona V___

Ona V___ is tall and thin,
   and has a regal way of speaking, from within.

She has a track star body, not an ounce of fat to spare . . . .
   like an Olympic champion . . . beautiful and feminine.

We go to the mirror, she looks at her face,
and when she does I get behind her, and stroke her deerlike legs,
   back, waist.

And when she asks me if I'm hitting on her, I say,
"Not really. I'm still drawing!" . . . We end it there.

But it is very erotic . . . she has the most powerful hands.
She gives beautiful back massages . . . she leaves me healed.

Who's been Nibbling?

"Who's been nibbling at my fruit?
I have no siblings, nor have I brood."
So the mushroom spoke out loud,
"It wasn't me!", I scraped and bowed.

One Night in the Forest

One night in the forest, 'midst dark and gloom,
High on psilocybin, I found this mushroom . . .

Careful

Careful where you put your shoes
Topple these I promise . . . you lose!
There's a mind below the earth
That surpasses what we know, in kind and worth.

A frightful experiment I'll not suggest,
Just a white remnant that you might deem to digest.
Why defend with such terrible fury?
Unless sent by an angel, . . . of great purity.

The Bog

Through this bog I plunged all night
Avoiding logs with celestial sight.

Lose your shoes at the wrong time of year,
You'll stumble around, and die of . . . fear.

Trail of Life

The trail of life is one foot wide,
Perils to the left, perils to the right.
We love the path that's straight ahead,
Beneath wreaths of danger, over our head.

Panic Grass

You might hide in Panic grass,
And mistake its name in error. . . .
Thinking you'll knead bread with it,
Or flee from it in terror.

Note: This grass is deer-tongued, of genus 'Panicum',
Mysteriously not secretive, species 'clandestinum'.