La Sirena sketch by marisol diaz

There were days that I felt collided into each other. I would lay on my back in a state of sloth like paralysis and I stared at the ceiling. Layers of my vision overlapped in transparent stacks, shifting constantly. The mattress became placenta and the room a maternal womb. I struggled to imagine the possibility of ever being able to get up again. It felt as though air was leaving me. When I could, I strained to turn my gaze towards the window I was in awe of how quickly the sun rose and set and rose again. It was painful to imagine sitting up. It wasn't until the day I heard the lock rattle and his sweet whistle, that beads of sweat tumbled down my brow and puddled over my lip, beckoning me to move again.

I needed to know what was happening to me, to hear him calling made my entire body ache all over. What had he done to me? How had he done this to me? He immobilized me in order to need him, and I was captured in the net. Is this what had happened to Lily? Had she disappeared not fled? He was all I had and so I had to get up.

"I have the key, I can unlock you from this place all you have to do is say the word." He spoke in sonar as I stood there unsteady staring, trying to place the phonetic beats of his words.
"Where is Lily?"
"What's the difference, where she is?"
He reached his hand through the gate swiping tears of sweat off my forehead coldly. He pressed his head tightly up against the bars.
"Did she really matter that much to you? I can make it so that you can see her again, if you let me take you out of here."
I couldn't make out my emotions, relieved for his arrival yet terrified down to my bones of him. I tried to talk but words began to fail me...my lips felt fused together muted into a frown.
"Tell me to open the gate and I'll show you what happened to your friend."
I used one hand to steady myself and other hand with its shaking fingers to part my lips. I was done fighting.
"Open the gate."

He slipped the iron key through the weathered lock and eased it into action so swiftly that I thought the lock must have had a soul. I thought quickly of my room and my mind fell on the flower...I would most likely never see her again. Somehow I knew that.

"I didn't want her to suffer, sometimes the girls can suffer much too much and it makes the transition that much harder."
My eyes began to roll towards the back of my head and the sounds of his words began to turn into images, flashes of Lily. I saw it all. They were in a body of water, entwined like lovers, she was excited, joyful and unaware, they swam underwater resurfacing to kiss, the intimacy between them was like sour gummy bears, and then the pulse happened, a flash of dark determination, and I felt her buckle up tense, I saw him grab her head with both of his huge hands and hold her wailing body under water, I felt her kick and jut like a wild horse, when I realized her air was gone, everything went still and I opened my eyes to face him.

On Growing An Ocean's Tale Self-Portrait

Lily was desperate. Time had lapsed in a painfully slow way. Even my bud seemed to halt all growth. I couldn't tell you how many days passed during what felt like no time at all. I began to feel restless my self, though I was still adamant on never ordering a key. Our hosts became more reclusive and began to simply leave the meals, even dinner simply sitting on the table for us. Lily took to pacing. She spent what felt like hours holding onto the gate staring out to the open, often empty road. Thats when the dreams started.

There was nothing around me only a haze of hot air. I could feel my bare feet sinking and recognized the sand's texture embracing my toes. In every direction there was only sand. I began to feel thirst as though I were a plant in desperate need of hydration, my emerald skin, shriveling into itself seeking moisture. Finally with no sound emanating from my throat I would start to cry just to gain liquid for breadth and challenge the dehydration. Thats when I saw the sirens emerging all around from the golden glittering sand and as ridiculous as it sounds they danced like Salome. Each looked so unique and so utterly brilliant like light splitting through a faceted jewel. They introduced themselves to me. I can't remember any of their names but one, the one who said she didn't arrive like the others, like me. She said she traveled to be here, willingly, knowingly and at peace. Her name was Tamara. That was when I would wake up with my hands wrapped around my throat gasping for air.

Habit Killer Self-Portrait

Maybe being addicted to the sound of their necks snapping like crispy twigs is itself a habit, in which case I would surely be my own greatest enemy. I can't tell you when exactly it started. I just know that the second my old friends, slothful Comfort, Familiarity and Inertia come around to visit, the beast within me rises.

Some people don't admit they're capable of committing such atrocities. They like to think its that they're a 'renaissance soul' or a 'scanner' always moving on to a new interest and having such a multi-task-able-and-ever-open mind - They commend themselves for being varied in interests, but really its that we're murderers.

We like to take that newly found virgin habit, exhaust it, master it, shake it up and turn it inside out, drink all of its blood, swallow its life-source, until it has nothing left to give. Until it lays there motionless. We kick it and wonder why it doesn't dance for us anymore, then we have the audacity to say 'I'm bored'. And once that invocation is spoken, there is no leashing that wicked killer in me. Who must then pluck off that old habit's limbs to erase it, until it exists only as a memory of something you once had. Gruesome I know - its what I am, what I've been, hey at least I'm honest. I don't settle.

Oh yeah, I know there is that habit, but people are different kinds of habits...for one, their life span is a whole hell of a lot longer. Still here is a classic piece of advice: Keep your marital door locked from old friends that might want to come visit - like Comfort, Familiarity (these days I hear she's had a couple of abhorring kids) and Inertia. If you hear those guys come a knockin' you better start switchin' things up or simply accept the murderer in yourself.

Detail of Louis Vuitton Window from my NYC Windows series on my FLICKR

Observations

The world is transforming at a faster speed unearthing the ground right below our feet.

Art is breaking through like an unruly weed that will not be deterred by herbicides, in fact it only mutates to champion the current chemical composition of our air.

We call it guerilla art - because it will not be contained or owned.

It sneaks up on you and attacks, permeates in a military fashion.

Soon my hands and eyes will be windows... extensions of my thoughts.

Our youth don't hear each other, instead they read each other 'texting' and 'iming' a new language of acronyms- lmfao. Virtual relationships dominate the living. This new dimension is surreal to those who refuse to enter the terrain...the internet has become the secret garden and those outside of it 'the antiquated architecture' or so says the master.

I'm not sure how much of my human flesh can be shared, translated into html, coded, programmed and posted...I'm not sure how much should be. I just know it is now always on my person.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I dare say that is just an issue of semantics...for I'm not moved very much by the stereotypical popularized version of a 'ghost'. I do however believe that there are haunting energy fields and there is most certainly spirit in anything - if you want there to be, good or bad. I believe there are objects infused with spirit - meaning and life force. Therefore I believe it possible to manifest a Prana (life force) into an inanimate object, but that's nothing compared to what I used to believe as a kid.

When I was little I believed deeply in 'ghosts' as we popularly define the word today. In fact, I used to see one - I remember her clearly. A woman in a white baby-doll-type dress standing in my doorway. However, my imagination was more active than it is today (if that's possible) and I also believed in a 'boogy-man'. He was an exact likeness of the fictional character Uncle Sam. I used to think I had ten seconds to get from the light switch to my bed (which was across the room) in the darkness before Uncle Sam would reach his hand out for me and say "I said I WANT you!!" at which time I feared he would grab/catch me and steal me away into the ether. Actually, come to think of it a scary old, crotchety, tall, anorexic, white man is kind of scary. And if thats not the most ridiculous child fear you've ever heard - I also believed that I had absolutely NO privacy...and I mean NO privacy. Even when I was alone I envisioned all my classmates (especially the boys who I abhorred and feared) lived inside of the walls of my room and could see my every move.

This is my Maya in one of my favorite pictures of her that I have ever taken...and there are so many, as well as so many sketches of her. These days Maya isn't looking so sharp witted though she still tries, and does a pretty good job of it. Maya will turn fifteen years old this November. She has been my companion since she was two months old. I wrote an article from her perspective once, that I thought would work well for this prompt. I have been struggling for the last few years in accepting her increasing frailty, hearing loss, and back joint pain. The new addition of a puppy in our lives has helped revive Maya's stamina, her desire to play and her reawakening to being an active participant. It has helped me accept the dog side of her and to unleash my hold a bit. But it doesn't change that little by little she is leaving me, us and this world...she seems to be waiting only for me to be ready.

My name is Maya- Lee Diaz, I have two humans; a female and male. My female human believes that just as Gods used to appear on earth disguised as peasants to test the character of humans in Greek Mythology, we dogs serve in that same capacity today. Therefore, I am treated like a Queen. I’m not about to burst her bubble!

I don't know what it is about me, but I am treated with great respect and regard by almost everyone I meet. In fact I’m often called Miss Maya. At night, I sleep between both of my humans with my head on a pillow and my body under the covers. I lift my head only to take a sip of water from my oversized ceramic bowl that my male human brings to me in bed. It is at those moments prior to falling into the deep sleep that consumes me, that I realize, 'damn I got it good'. They don’t know I rather sleep on the floor (and I actually do, once they’re too conked-out to notice).

My life hasn’t always been so easy. I’m a Scorpio for one, born on November 17th and us scorpions ...well lets face it we have attitude problems, we're way too independent to have others constantly pawing us. I’m a Samoyed Shepherd mix and don’t take kindly to being called a mutt, since I know exactly what my heritage is. In fact I'm so independently minded, that I'm bit on the bossy side. I’m so bossy that at this very moment, I’m actually leaning over the keyboard facing the laptop screen while I dictate this narrative to my slow-typing female human.

I began my life as I know it, at the age of two-months alongside of my female human. I was born in Springfield, Ohio, though all I remember of Springfield are metal bars and gawking humans. The smell and sounds were absolutely horrifying. If only you people knew what it was like to start life being yanked away from your biological parents and placed in small cubicles. I don’t know about you, but personally I don’t like to be forced to relieve myself where I have to sleep. There I was in the midst of the sounds, smells and sicknesses of yearning dogs stacked in rows of kennels in the inside of a Springfield mall pet store, when I saw her for the first time...who knew she would become my oldest friend?

Luckily for me, I found the right human. I can’t say the same for all my cell mates. She said I looked like a giant cotton ball when she found me. She moved me out of that God-forsaken, confined space into a small town, where I began the early days of my life, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Sounds idyllic don’t it?...for a dog to live in a place called Yellow Springs, but that’s really what it’s called! Yellow Springs: a wonderful, small, progressive college town, with lots and lots of grassy fields, acres of woods and noble souls. A town where everyone knew everyone and I used to frequently pass by my sister’s house. Things were good those days. I remember my first rooms, my first kitchen, the first 6foot floor plant I knocked down, decimated and destroyed all over the kitchen floor. Most of all, I remember my back yard. Oh, and being let off my leash on any one of the many fields at all the parks around and running wild-twenty-miles-an-hour circles around my human! Ahh, If only the days could have stayed like that.

Unfortunately around a year later, I learned my human was a bit on the ‘unsettled side’ of life. So we had to move. And boy did we move!

First to Miami, Florida; where I got to enjoy early morning walks on the beach. Then we moved to Baltimore, Maryland; where I chased more mice than I’ve ever experienced before and where I first met my future male human, only he didn’t know it yet. I have even traveled to Puerto Rico! twice! Rural Puerto Rico, a place where to see a dog live like I do, is to truly see royalty. Then the joy ride was over and we moved to the most obnoxious of all the places I have ever lived in my whole life...New York City.

Talk about country dog vs. city dog! I’ll never figure out what that city’s hype is all about! I quickly ran out of dirt squares and trees to do my business and let’s just say concrete is not my idea of a relieving station. Thankfully my female human is a native New Yorker and took me to all the rare, chlorophyll-filled, emerald bathroom spots she knew of; but seriously that ain't much. Concrete, concrete everywhere and not a branch to toss and chase! “No dogs here!”, “Hey you make sure you pick that up!” screams from across the street and traffic so loud, big and vibrating, that it caused me to walk in a constant state of paranoia with my tail curled between my legs. I get shivers just thinking about it! As though that weren’t bad enough, our apartment was the smallest of spaces I have ever been in, with the exception of my cell back in Springfield. But the absolute worse part of living in NYC, was that I couldn’t reach the window to watch my human leave everyday.

Luckily, I made sure my human knew that I travel well. I actually like long Uhaul truck rides and when my human bought her first car we went everywhere that we possibly could together, even Bombay New York, seven hours North of NYC! That trip was when my male human came into our lives and I started to appreciate life in a new light. He changed my perspective on everything...even NYC. I had never noticed all that city had to offer before, like little corner restaurants with dog fountains, long Central park walks, the frequent visits to the local video store. I fell so in love with my male human, especially the taste of him! I love to lick his balding head and face as though it was my personal bone! Then came the very best move...we left the city and moved to Piermont, New York in Rockland County.

There my female and male humans got married and I didn’t need to buy a dress because I’m already white! In Piermont we had a deck facing the Hudson River that I laid out on all spring and summer long. We were very happy there but it still wasn’t a place we could call home...because quite frankly I still didn’t have my life long dream of a yard of my own. When I turned ten years old my humans started to discuss something called a ‘penultimate home’. All I know is that what happened next was priceless. We moved into a whole house and left that world of temporary spaces. I have a large picture window all to myself, pet doors in all the right places, a leather couch that I have christened right in front of a large fireplace, a half acre backyard, a hot big black boyfriend named Tiger who lives right next door and plenty of rooms to call my own. Now, after a decade of waiting, I am living like the goddess I am.

This past November I turned fourteen years old…things aren’t as easy as they used to be. I’m becoming a bit more clouded. It has become a little difficult to hear what everybody is talking about. Not to mention my back-end is rebelling against me, making my step-climbing quite difficult. Last year, I all but gave up; I was so tired I started losing interest in getting up off the couch. That all changed when my female human brought home some over-sized-rat-excuse-for-a-dog! Can you believe that??? She betrayed me with this little male macho adrenaline junky pest who likes to lick, jump, hug, clean my ears and imitate my every move! Well, there was no way I was going to let this guy take over my kingdom; I told him “Just don’t jump in my face 'cause I’ll put you in your place!” I was forced to defend my honor, and so I got up off the couch, started celebrating my human’s arrival again, started hearing a little better too (of course with all that ear licking he does!). After, a while I started warming up to the kid, especially when he likes to sleep huddled up against me. Now I have a playmate out in the yard and Tiger gets jealous, which make me feel quite desired! I guess the little punk’s not so bad. In fact, when he’s not around, I kind of miss him!!

Well that’s my story and I thought I better dictate it and get it all documented now, before I lose the rest of my faculties. I hope you enjoyed it!

It was an indecent request, especially coming from him, but she already knew that. She claimed it was the boredom, the anguished sun rising and falling perpetually, the drops of sweat running between her thighs, the bars on the windows and the lock on the gate that caused her wickedness. It should have made no difference to me...still...my feelings for her had started to change. I no longer found her indispensable.

I for one loved the aimless day and the intense heat. My intentions were to cater only to my passion for alchemy-ish experiments all summer. I filled my moments with either an inordinate amount of self-imposed deadlines or nothingness- where I just stared at the ocean's horizon and contemplated its unwavering straightness. Our parents, mutual friends through the corporation, had thought it ideal for two young women coming of age to spend the summer on this isle. I thought the idea quaint for our long collegiate summer break, though I have always generally been indifferent to the way my parents think. Yet, I have to admit, knowing what their money can buy, I was just as surprised as Lily was about the de trop confinement.

Our hosts, an elderly couple, barely spoke English if they spoke any language at all. They left us alone most of the day with the exception of dinner. The husband was a burnt, crisp, wreaking fisherman and so we ate more fresh seafood than any all-you-can-eat sushi buffet back home. The lip-sealed couple tended the property which seemed to have major acreage. Still our guest-like existence and activities strictly hovered in close range to the locked front gate.

I remember the day he came to call. I had successfully grown a hybrid lilac with ruby black petals, my Environmental Mutiny professor would have been proud. The bud was at the precipice of opening. Lily was playing with her hair, humming, air-swimming and embracing invisibility in a waltz when the bane of my existence arrived at the gate. The sky shook. He rattled the lock so loudly it crashed through my complacent bliss like a canon. I noticed Lily's agitated state and I knew from that moment on things would never be the same.

He hung his rolled up white sleeves through the gate's bars and promised us both a never-before-had experience, and more importantly "a choice", for a different way of life. In a delicious, rich droll of a door to door salesman he offered a way to "drop out of the system".

"I rather like the system, What are you an anarchist?" I asked in an inadvertently disgusted manner, but to be honest I was observing him like a specimen of great degradation. I noticed chest hair, seed chains and a wedding ring. I was therefore surprised when he licked his lips and in an inappropriate manner passed his hand over Lily's arm. I warned her with my eyes that she stood within a dangerous proximity to the gate. He seemed to notice my retreat and proceeded to talk about magic and the ability to make something out of nothing through the ocean's reef, as though he knew what would lure me.

"Look I live here, all year round and I have sent other girls to this place that I speak of...it's a blue world where things like sex just don't matter, but love..." He looked at Lily and exhaled, "..that still matters. Look if you come, you won't regret it, the first night is like being at the dance club on X you know, but on the beach, all the girls they never wanna come back. Its a shortcut to fulfillment." He sucked air in through his teeth and looked hard into Lily's eyes then straight on asked her, "Are you even a little interested?"
"How do we unlock the gate?"
Leave it to Lily to answer a question with a question.
"You order a key... with me."

Lily's eyes turned puppy dog and she slobbered in my direction with a face of yearning. All I could think about was how every shortcut I ever took in my life felt like cheating, which in turn made me feel lesser not fuller. Less capable is not my idea of fulfillment. If I considered leaving I suspected that I would never see my bud bloom. The mysterious stranger was undeniably aware of my resistance, despite my lack of verbal cues. He was significantly older than us as I could see the salt and pepper spray along his temples crowning the recession of his full head of hair.

Suddenly he withdrew, "I'll give you a week to think about it." He slipped his arms out around the lock, jiggled it for effect and walked away with a confident sockless-in-sandals-swagger.

Painting by Gregg Emery entitled Sea and Sun (Mar y Sol my name).

I couldn't imagine my life without it...literal sight that is. Certainly the fear of lost sight is up there with tsunamis and earthquakes. As an artist the function of my eyes are critical to both the extrinsic and intrinsic aspects of my life. I have to wear corrective lenses and often I dream about waking up with an ability to have 20/20 sight.

However, it is inner vision, the sixth eye, that kind of vision that creates the aura around my existence. My sense of observation is interlaced with my perception and I have no vision without my focus and concentration.

To me to have vision, is also to be a visionary and is ultimately a life goal. To have vision is to be able to see the greater picture, past present and future, therefore enabling progression with insight into potential.
This is my husband's painting in which he mediates on being centered and processes a landscape. I think it is the best image for 'Vision' since the inner eye can only see when it is centered, calm, focused as opposed to disoriented, off-centered and distracted. Also because it is about perception and environment.

I also ponder the importance and relationship of visual problem solving with being a well-balanced, innovative and creative person and therefore a more successful human being. To me being a more successful human being is not about money or possessions, but instead about the amount you are able to give, laugh, share, inspire and delight this planet not with waste and drainage but with blossoms of life.

http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com/

I also think giving art away is 'visionary' so check out my Guerilla Art Giveaway three posts back on MY BLOG and leave me a 'Rainbird' comment to win a signed print of collage art by me for free!!!

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The day the portal opened I was changed. How can one not be - especially when a portal opens from the pores of a sofa...better yet grandpa George's sofa. I began to wonder if George knew about that alternate universe all along. Afterall why would he have slept there so often, for so long? Ultimatley I learned that's what it looks like to others, as though you're in the deepest of slumbers when really you are so far gone.

After that day, it opened often. Infact it was so frequent that I considered I may not be fully living in this dimension anymore - atleast not wholeheartedly. I was besides myself with curiousity, fever and joy. I was entering seasons of illuminating light simply by melting into microcosms and slipping into the fabric's open weave. I met creatures that I knew must have existed throughout my life but were abolished for reasons I don't know, still.

These days it seems the portal doesn't open frequent enough...infact they say that someday it may stop all together. I'm just getting my fotting in this new place and I don't know which of the two places I can say goodbye to...I feel like I'm just getting started.

I wrote this piece about Night for Sunday Scribblings this past weekend and I thought it went too well with the words that Bone picked, so I fused the two together - hope no one is disappointed!

Through the frayed edge of her petticoats comes the gleaming orange of twilight.

She wrestles with sleeplessness solving puzzles in her minds eye, causing dew to tear up in droplets on her flesh.
One pill makes her larger and one pill makes her smaller, but they all unlock the rabbit hole.

What is night but the key to the door that holds back the torrent of unleashed possibilities...

Night is the rehabilitator, the ancient bearded page-turner...the fanciful carnival lady who peddles change in a bottle...
Night is the uninhibitor...
The unabashed beast rocking the gates of his cage as the bars give way...

Night is the Queen that yells "OFF WITH HER HEAD!!!" as the deck of cards fall where they will with a dizzy flip of heads and tails.

The cooing of a one legged bird and the cricket's song...the mad woman in the attic.

Each and every exhale she falls deeper down the hole. The hours are dressed in winds howling blows...
Candle light flickers, fears rise and fall and an indescribable release takes hold.

The ground is a trampoline of bleeding colors.

Once and for all she lands in place.
What is night but the key to the rabbit hole, what is day but the lock.