Dreams are best when achieved with the HELP of others.

Dear Writers. Dear Artists. Dear Music Makers. Dear Scientists. Dear Teachers. Dear Humans who recognize that it is not always easy to exist in this world.

So, years ago I met a magical beam of light called Peggy Dyer. She is a photographer, teacher, yogi, friend, inspirational rainbow.

I can spend chapters telling you all about her magic, but this is not about that. This is about helping her get her home back. 

She is asking for a little help. We all need it eventually, so we might as well do what we can to connect each other. Here are her words:

7 years ago I was homeless, living out of my 1983 Toyota Dolphin.  Life has been an extraordinary adventure these past several years finding my way back to my feet.

5 years ago this lovely little cottage became home through the generosity of some friends.  I’ve managed to bring it all back together, my business is back on track and I’ve had the great fortune over these past few years to continue to make my living as a photographer, teacher and continuing my healing community project, One Million Faces. 

Just when things were leveling out, a completely unexpected encounter left me on the verge of homelessness again.  The encounter was one of love, and of course a love that was founded upon faith and trust, and it was undeserved and I fell and fell hard and as a result I nearly lost my stability again.

Now I have an opportunity to purchase my tiny home, and there’s a deadline and I need a little help from all my friends to get the down payment together by May 1st.

Through my art that I love and give my entire being to, I invite people to share their messages with the world, to speak their truth.  I love watching people light up and I shine most when I’m creating art and community at the same time. 

But now I speak my truth and am asking my community to help me purchase my permanent home, to make this dream come true for me.

Thank you

HELP PEGGY BUY HER HOME

 

luf |ləv| (like very much; find pleasure in)

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”   — Cheryl Strayed

What do you mean you’re lost. This is exactly where you were heading toward. There is water somewhere over there and look! there’s a chorus of trees humming your favorite song. There are patches of shade beside the sun and ducks beside the turtles and is that an alpaca‽

This is just what you’ve been looking for and it is easy and pronounceable. It is romantic and cinematic. You are learning a new language, but you’ve heard so many of these words before. Sometimes ease can be difficult to get used to because you never expected it to exist.

Breathe in this aroma. Some call it magic. You call it luf.

day 22: blink.

It was a day unlike Sunday, but it was Thursday. Everyone’s knees gathered the fumes of dandelions and coughed-up dreams. There was an unspoken incantation in the air because no one was blinking. Eyes did not grow dry nor weak from remaining open; instead, nothing was missed. Everything was seen– from the foil-tipped wings of a dove flying nearby to the drip of supper sauce in the corner of a pigeon’s mouth. The humans saw the weather shift from cold to colder. Hands held other hands, instead of handheld contraptions. Love was contagious because it was noticed; it was felt. There were roses popping up like blades of grass. Various sized petals and colors like ocean’s blue and sunflower yellow. The humans left the flowers alone, but watched them. Watched them get bigger or smaller or wilt or go wild. One human picked one. A flower which had yet to be named. It was not scientific, nor was it invited. But it smelled of two a.m. wake-up from current lover when pressed between fingers. It smelled of wheat grass and cloud juice. It remained alive long enough to last until eyes finally grew dehydrated and forced itself into a blink. Then, the open-close rotation continued and repeated until suddenly things went missing. Flowers became blurs of color and animals roamed without any more mention. It was just a day.

write outside of the magic on your tongue.

It doesn’t happen right away.

It is defined as: articulation of language / understanding of the magic found within the poetics of body. 

You must read books. You must walk outside the magnetic glow of computer screen and sewn-to-palm fancy phone in order to understand the coordinates of your magic. No one is just given the recipe on how to make all this work. Walk. Ride bicycle until your knees collapse against the rust of your peddling. Sing out until your voice cracks open. Do enough mathematical word problems to understand that that is a language as well and numbers can just be exploratory as letters.

some thoughts on magic and measurements.

…..first Sunday of new year and toes begin to weep away frozen hangnails

 

I traveled under

the brooklyn queens

expressway

over black and grey

snow. Got lost inside

a taxi cab just for you

to read my skin again.

Yesterday, this face was called unpretty. What is it about measurements and masculinity that causes others to feel so threatened or disrobed.

After the romantic comedy ordered for free on computer screen, she removed shirt and began to cut her hair. Each slice was deliberate. Hair was pressed into last plastic bag meant for sandwiches not split ends. This pile of locks is for the woman who lives underground and all around me. When others visit her, they bring rocks. I give her my hair.

After three decades of back-and-forth addiction, I may have settled on this last one. Call it magic or movement. Cannot be purchased from neighbor who cooks it in his kitchen. Or bodega window where if you only want one and not the whole pack, that can be arranged. Or from lover who stores it in jars meant for fireflies or love notes. This drug is less visible and cannot be hidden in pockets or up nose. Last night, when I chased it all across Brooklyn, I fell inside winter potholes, hidden by frozen water. Most drugs can be purchased; this one needs to be found.

We can talk about our gender all day, but when I think about your mouth, I am reminded of the canoe I clung to years ago. You make me think of rivers and walls removed. You make me think of yellow and that photograph of costa rican sunset that hired a muralist to create such an exquisite marriage of red and orange. You make me think of oxygen and the ways in which you have trained yours to communicate with the earth to wrap itself around oceans and caves. You make me think of the labels sewed into the roots of my skin and the sensation of digging these restrictions up and out of my body.

Last week, this body was called gaunt. What is it about binding my body into a carefully unedited story that causes others to fear starvation.

Here is [some] modern love. This has everything to do with the love affair I find myself in with my osteoblasts. And the night I thought about Rebel’s question of rebirth through orgasm. So, I found my nude while rain wrung out its sad against my windows. And I did not think about addiction to magic and melting measurements. Instead, I gained entrance to the parts of me I am strange to. It is too soon to call it rebirth; maybe just a new devotion to the complication and deeply erotic overwhelm of my self.

reading palms.

Some palms are like walls. Too spackled and hidden to read. But when she let me grab her left and right and sit it in mine, I could have read for hours. She held novels within each crease. I traced each finger as though I had never seen one before; hers could have lead me to believe in anything.

She told me mine were artist hands. You’ve crossed borders on your knuckles, haven’t you? she said. I called her fingers pianos. I forgot to ask if she played any instruments. Maybe because I already know.

Around us, poetry. Occasionally, we would stop to listen. But I would not let go of her hand. I could not call her beautiful because that word describes days or meals. It is used everyday on too many things. She is more like a mountain. Difficult. High. A rubble of lives. Impossible to leave behind.

I pressed my fingers into her back. Rubbed at her energy. Yellow. Dim. Glow-in-the-dark.

I asked her to hold her gaze into my left eye for two minutes. I needed time to untwist the tether of her mind. 52 seconds, I taste salt. One minute 7 seconds, she drips fourteen yesterdays. One minute seventeen seconds, I see why she flinched when I touched her chest. One minute thirty one seconds and I feel what she feels. One minute forty nine seconds and I see green and owls and can taste the elephant in her.

Two minutes and I ask her what that led her to see or feel.

She smiles and I want to be homeless. She smiles and I want to be homeless so that I can beg her for the shelter that lives inside her smile.

I can’t…I can’t speak, she said.

Her face is contagious. I tell her to pause.

A poet walks on stage and she tells me that he is her friend. We watch and my knee touches hers and her shoulder leans against my forearm and all this touching should never have to end. Should never have to be named.

After our palms become instruments to honor the poems left on stage, she turns to me. I let her move my hair, which is far longer than hers but more masculine.

She whispers: Cement. I felt and saw cement.

I laugh because this is what I do. I touch people. I heal. I read. But I’ve never heard this before. I want her to clarify, but I also just want to leave that word alone.

It is getting noisier, but our pitch remains the same. We are now reading each other’s lips. Hers are small and she bites down on the bottom as though she is reeling it in like something she has just caught. Her teeth are crooked and charming. I whisper into her left ear a paragraph from Fear and Loathing. I ask her what she has memorized. When she leans in and presses her breath up against my hair and neck, she softly slurs: my name.

When midnight arrives, the chairs are put away and the lights tell us it is time to go home. I ask her to drink tequila with me because earlier she called this the liquid that causes her self to be left behind. We walk across the street and drink it on ice with sour mix. We both leave our straws behind as I hand her my passport and go page by page, reading out each stamp. She listens, creating poems in her head that I’m sure will be read on tomorrow’s stage. I want to kiss her but I am indelicate with my mouth and instead I press my chest to hers and we embrace. Tomorrow, her palms will be hungover and I will wonder about the three identities I located inside her. I will try to place the name of the forest her smell reminds me of while finding the remains of her salt still swimming in my skin.

an island of magic

Nobody lives here. The houses are empty, although the grass is tidy. The porches are wide enough for baskers to lean against. There is music; there is poetry; there is enough food and enough generators and enough children here to remind us of who we used to be. People arrive on a ferry and there are dogs here and babies and overpriced ice-cream and kayaks. There is a composting center with goats and chickens and plenty of tools for the passersby to play with. There is miniature golf; there is a museum. There is a gift shop that accepts credit cards and traveler’s cheques; there are fathers and loners; there are enough families to remind those without how without they are. There is a playground and an arts & crafts center; there is a brothel; there is an outside pub; there is live music. There is water; there are benches. There is a carnival of French rides.

There is one hundred and seventy acres of land but nobody lives here.

And that man with a cane and discolored legs tells the other man with whitened beard and kind heart that this land is for people to wander in; there is enough housing on the other side of the island.

But there seems to be a forgotten mention of those without housing and those without family and those without enough paper in wallets or pockets to pay for food purchased off trucks for more money than is made for an hour of work.

Nobody lives here and yes this place feels magical. It is vast and free and has the aroma of something made of patchwork’d memories. Maybe one day, they will unhinge the front doors and let people in who need permanent housing. Maybe one day, the ice cream here will cost less than $5 for five licks and a belly ache. Maybe one day, there will be more magical places such as this that encourage the wanderers to stay. We could all use a place to get lost in more often, don’t you think?

 

oh comfort, zone of magic

None of this is comfortable.

Twenty-four years of therapy and several thousand disrobes and how many books and judgements conclusions. Processes and approaches and angles of near-sighted reflections. A few couches but mostly upright. Some in-patient and group work and locked doors and removed laces. The lovers who tried to dissect me– the ones who could barely see in me.

Walk into a different circle. Notice how this makes you feel what do you feel.
Are you ready for the tingle? And can you handle the sting of prescriptions– not from pills or powders– but sight.

You will only notice something is changing when you make that when you make a change.

You may find seventeen lifetimes hidden in your one.

You may excrete several pounds of wishes that got lost in the mail or shopping mall fountains. Still wish.

You may drop out of weekends because your tears wash you away and you have no ores to paddle you through this.

You may need to sew a thread to someone else so they don’t move too far from you so they remain because no one ever remains. You may just need to ask them to stay.

Feel around. There is curvature in this magic. There is a twist at the top and bottom and sides like the way a smile arches. Smiles are like magic. And smiles can be uncomfortable too.

nadal oodh

How much am I willing to pay for peace?

On my way toward an uptown pub to meet a friend, I inhale the scent of meditation. Outside, there are scarves, carefully folded colors in piles like square clouds. I am early to meet him, so I stroll inside, expanding my lungs as aromatic smoke covers me.

I am brought back to Bob Dylan in tape deck of two door hatchback; I am fifteen. I am a passenger in a car driven by Farrah, the first hippie I ever secretly loved. Her skin was drenched in patchouli and her hair gathered in knots and all those freckles and her long skirts and nose ring. At that time, we both volunteered at the same place, spending hours with humans who were placed in a home because their minds grew differently than other’s. We completed puzzles and drew, listened to music, and donated our time to people who– for the better part of the day– were ignored.

In this tiny store full of homemade candles and tinctures and sweet-scented oils, I spoke with the singular worker about slowing down.

“This is the first moment of my day where I am stopping just to breathe.”

He rubbed a package of incense together and asked me to inhale.

“This is nadal oodh,” he said.

And my knees began to curve from the musk mangling up my insides in the most exquisite way. It was far too pricey, so I began to look around. I breathed in nag champa and frankincense and guggul and camphor. My fingers settled on sandalwood and as we exchanged currency (dollars, receipt), he grabbed one stick of nadal oodh and gave it to me.

“Fill your space with this,” he said. “Save it for a moment when you need your air to tell you things.”

I am percolating in ruminations. My soul has been searching it’s self and sometimes I think about joining in. I am not sure where I should be, but I need to be somewhere.