green dreams

if there were only some way to have every single day be a green festival day,
my soul might finally quiet
my conscience may finally be free of the guilt of being a human consumption machine
i might actually wake up and be happy to be a part of humanity...
but the green festival does not happen every day,
it only comes but one weekend each November,
and this year it came this past weekend to San Francisco.
Thankfully,and not a moment too soon, it came...
with all the bells and whistles of last year's event:
great speakers, hundreds of freebies handed out from socially & environmentally conscious companies, too numerous to mention, so many ways to spend your money for a good cause, fill your belly with uber healthy and fine foods, and give your mind and body the boost it needs to make it through yet another ugly consumer holiday season.
Everyone, and their grandparents, children, friends, and dogs(um, scratch that, no dogs, unless you are blind) should all make it a point to not miss out on next year's event... and to show up early, preferably Friday or Saturday, before the place becomes uncomfortably mob-scenish, yet another quality of our sometimes trying society.
The following are s few of my favorites from this year's event:

Care2.com - they gave out tons of free all natural lip balm, tote bags, and healthy green solutions for cleansing your body and home. Check them out online!

Trees for the Future; PLANT-TREES.ORG - Helping to reinstate trees in clearcut communities, underprivalged nations.

Planet Green _ A spinoff of the discovery channel who gave out so many green totes to every passerby. The number one question i got was where they handed out those neat green bags. Look for this channel on cable next year.

Brighterplanet.com - They are bringing out a green credit card to help offset carbon with your buying power.

Farm Fresh to You; farmfreshtoyou.com - I knew about these people before, but decided to finally go for it: Organic produce delivered in various box sizes directly from the farm where it is grown and harvested! A small box is about $20, and comes with seasonal goodness at your chosen timespan. All the volunteers for them were amazingly sweet and happy, an obvious side effect of working naturally with the land.

Mynaturals.com - An online source for thousands of natural and organic products, healthy living resources, green credits earning, with a distributor and cooperative program. They gave away online discount vouchers and a handful of fun samples. Thanks guys!

Green City Calendar; planetdrum.org - A website to find green events and volunteer opportunities in the city.

Eco Citizen; ecocitizenonline.com - Local made and organic clothing right here in SF.

mrelliepooh.com - A maker of elephant dung paper as a way to stop deforestation and use available resources that also embrace yet another use for the majestic elephant.

Regenerative Design Institute; regenerativedesign.org - This is a "non-profit educational organization that envisions a world where people, inspired by nature, create and maintain healthy livelihoods to enhance fertility and biodiversity on the planet." I will make this happen next year... i will go to this institute.. someway, somehow.

Reware; rewarestore.com - A solar powered bag in various styles to charge any device anywhere in the world. They also have a strap on solar charger that can be put on other bags you already have. Very smart technology... still a bit pricey at $100-200+

Solio - Another solar charging device that is hand held, folds to the size of a large cell phone, and can charge anything as well. This is a smaller cheaper alternative, at $95, and is a bit more compact. I am curious to see how it works for Ambi & Fabi, my friends who bought one for their very own. I am not yet convinced.

Villagegreen.com - Pay these people a small amount to convert where your particular energy comes from. I am now about to get a certificate stating where i get my power, and the bill still comes from PG&E, cuz it is their lines, but the power is all alternative.

Manos De Madres, Manosdemadres.org - The woman of Honduras collect used bags and wrappers to craft wonderfully bright and sturdy little pouches and bags distributed by Manos de Madres, it is administered by Cofeacoma in Comayagua. These a great support to the woman and families there, as well as a feel good product.

World of Good; .org or .com - A fair Trade resource having their once a year warehouse sale on 12/01 & 12/02 @ 6315 Doyle St in Emeryville. CHeck them out online too!

Jennyhurth.com - Jenny gets used trade show banners and other vinyl marketing which would otherwise end up in landfill, and creates cool bags, folders, and hampers. There were others like her, but i didn't get much of their info to give out. Bravo for ingenuity and design!!

For the other companies who are still my favorites, which i found last year and some of who remained this year as well, check out my archived blog "Greener Than This" from Green Fest 2006 in SF. I didn't get to hear as many speakers as i wanted to this year, but did break down to tears when i listened to Amy Goodman's passionate speach about what is so wrong right now, big oil, bad men, and the poor state of our democracy, but felt empowered when she reminded us yet again of the power in numbers.
I did, however, have the priviledge of volunteering this year, and enjoyed an evening handing back coats to an inspirational throng of green-goers on Saturday night. For Sunday i decided to stay behind with the green team to sort our many bins of compostables for any waylaid garbage or recycling that didn't belong there. It was yucky and stinky, but felt oh so fullfilling.
There is humbling at the green festival.
There is therapy.
There is renewal.
There is hope.
There is even the sound of so many hearts beating to one primal rythmic drum, which can never be taken from within us, can never be quieted.

constant

nothing is constant but change
nothing is constant but change
nothing is constant but change

..this, the constånt refrain,
set to melodies of
ecstacy or suffering,
darkness and light...
the stage of life unfolds eternally,
with us the minor players,
whom take our grace from god
searching out the wrong from right,

and who sometimes forget
that ours alone is not all there is;
we shrink from our own needs and infatuations,
are sometimes so desperate
that we are no longer appealing
to our own higer mind;
too afraid to speak
at the top of our own voices;
too attached to see the glory
of merely being
alive.

controling the uncontrolled

Burning brighter days now
where i sit and sift the sad sands of time
through my ever-increasing sense of self,
whilst i watch the people passing me by
and turn to hear their distant comments on the air
..so aware..
and so in dispair,
for this inability to change into the one
to ease all others pain,
to find myself in love again,
to be a better self-less soul,
to have a code of honor which i can rightly live by,
but which is of all things my own..

I am standing on the brink of thirty,
looking at ten years into which my deepest fears have shown
the vast emptiness which lies within me,
whenever my mind tries too hard to wonder why,
and whenever i cannot master the yearnings of my foolish body,
which takes too much pleasure in the passions of my youth;
and whenever too i turn to find my soulmate,
and can only watch as he eludes my every step,
is just out of reach
or is simply wearing a mask that i cannot see beyond.
But i myself can never wear this mask, i have been reminded,
i myself can only wear my heart and my severity,
to cold light of day which greets me,
and beckons me forth on this journey,
wearing the most transparent sense of self i can muster,
and ready for almost anything, as i have never once been dissappointed...

swiching off & breaking away

my switch has been turned
to off;
no longer in lust with
the one i have loved for too long now
(to be of any real use to me)
his demonstrations
of our physicality
left this body o'mine longing
for the sweetest gentle other
who ekes out magic with his movements,
uses his voice to caress my insides;
he pulls heaven from his mind's eye
sends it to me with penetrating glances,
which i could only find in distant memories
of the once I who was longed for
by brothers so long long ago;
and this older, now wiser me
stares eternity in the face,
making plans for something permenant
upon which to stake my heart or
claim my space.
I am a weary soul delighted
to be at once free and fancied,
yet terrified i let slip the reigns
to forever or even just one more day.
BUT the whole world is now up for grabbing,
my body totally mine,
having finally, eternally
taken to flight & broken away.

scenes from an online dating world

the twilight resonates my heart's madness;
searching and responding in ways n'er tried before.
(tho twas god who closed that chapter in this life
twas he who has also opened several once unlikely doors...)
new suitors fly out from cyber nowheres
endlessly reexamining my quest for the tangible and more,
i seek to find the faithful companion of my dreamscapes.
he may be just a refreshed page away...
he walks the earth upright and careful
not to tread upon the strings of the heart,
not to wear the world so heavily and
not to make marks which won't erase from this earth's memory.

Now aware as ever that each little word does absolutely count
when you make your conversations heard through typing hands,
to be re-read by the diligent
who pick up on the nuances lying deeply between the lines.
and feeling blessed by responses which may be real,
may be false,
yet still seem whole-hearted enough in the posing.
this is a tricky dimension upon which to set sail one's
ship of hope,
and yet
it is so exciting a time
to reinvent one's emotional correspondence,
to build a persona which is worthy of my own admiration,
as well as someone else's,
to piece together friendships from the furthest corners
of my computorial capabilities,
to reach out and find myself actually touched and even sparkling
in the beautiful and irreverent misty moonlight.

plantains and puntang

i have been suckered back into
what was my self once
long ago
when i felt the speakers
pumping good vibes through my veins
and my body capitulated accordingly

i am still sending out smoke signals
still in love with the night
i thought i had lost
still empowered to take numbers
and send them in single file...
but i won't...
can't go there
not yet when the world is so wicked
and i am trying to be ever so good
and a new one woos me with fried plantains
but the taste of my once love still lingers in the air

and on my tongue
i have officially been wowed into silence
where i wait while my heart beats ever louder than
before
and am sure i have made a mistake
before i ever have made a move

and the mystic in me smiles
and curses my libido back to reality...
really
i can survive with much less.

wicked wanderland

am somewhere searching for a hidden meaning
looking out at the urbanity of my life
wishing only for treetops and clearwater
licking icecream on sunshine staircases
journeys to everywhere and then some...
would like to keep up romance
tho it seems too indefinate a must for right now
and i am helplessly lost in each moment
watching the days fly as they so often do
going on four years to nowhere
in abundance of friends and food
lacking time or enough reason and rest
to make the decisions count for...
myself and mon beau are secretly mistified and lovelost
we keep weeping dryly toward a posthumous relationship
which we will never keep up with and not lose our own selves in
Oh how the dark ones do taunt me
and make me long for sojourn and sobriety
and sugar in this here bowl...
alas i have naught for now
as my love reaches ever farther away
whilst we continue holding on to eachother's fingers...
and sucking on our toes
and heaven only knows what this future me holds
but the tease is in me,
and i haven't yet told it to sit down and shut up.

journey down south

Dust devils and delapidation dot this california countryside
where the ground thirsts and moans
as the sky opens up to beat the sun on down
This need for chopped wood and random irrigation,
power lines crisscrossing like umbilical cords,
connecting these less-than-zen szborra
with their abilities to move their god-grown goods.
Waste piles around the salvage lots and fruit packing plants
where the ugliness of mechanism and transport
interrupt my natural appreciations.
Filing past land that looks long worn,
acres well marked and marred for their plantings,
debris and old cars line the hwys where people drive past
to somewhere without looking;
Ugliness the omni-present byproduct of
commerce running wholy amuck with our ecosystem.
This is not the farmland i remember as a child.
There i could go entire days without seeing cars move
and could truthfully commune with the trees and the fauna
who were my only line of sight,
my friends the blissful foresters.
Instead, the industrial wasteland of Fresno,
a once-fine farmer's hellhole,
is where the old homes and monstrous buildings crowd around
like unpersonified overlords of the crops they are eagerly displacing.

ugh and goodnight...postponed

trying and failing for positive reinforcement weighing heavily on mind
this need to regroup and refocus
but to be touched and to communicate my femininity
watching the moon as it slowly turns to full
faces me from these windy empty skies where i am staring in wonderment
at the abandoned reality i once held so dear
from my treepost i sit ready to attack my aggression
and tackle my fits of needy time
i try and fail again to read the book he blessed me with
and swim the laps i promised myself
instead i sink thru the quicksand of denial and depression
call out to any passersby to save me from my own exhausted wandering
wondering still where i am and how i got here
too tired really to go out looking for anything else
too scared to really face that empty bed and go it alone
too aware of my own ineffective transparency
too thin-skinned and beguiled by the light of day
far too long having eaten and bathed with only his blessing
feeling shell-shocked and worn down no good to no one anymore...
but praying still that i can be good for myself

forest universe

Too many of the good things end

I watch and learn the freying tides

hoping to jump ship at the right moment

believing only that all moments are right

if you have warm water around you

The silence of my once heart beats against the sound

of my tears falling

pooling in prisms within my memories

The silence of my classroom echoes back

against my mind's wish to turn back time's hands

and make so many more of these fine things and memories

I am still the wanton hunter

seeking refuge in the treeposts

looking out for a fine young buck... so to speak

of Primal and hungry for more of the same...

But with keener points

and stronger sinuea

meatier man to chew some fat with

or , at least , a more predictable field guide

through this forest universe

licking the wounds so that they heal

i am an aunt again... to a little light in the world named Sonia
who came into this world while her mother
bared down and breathed hard
her mother, my lovely friend who reminds me
of the woman i choose to be
who lives cautiously inside me
the woman i almost am
hers, whose hands give signs of peace and love
a visible love, tangible and almost breathable love....
something that i would love to have
a love that caresses me warmly in the nighttime and whispers sweet nothings to me and actual "i love you's"
wants to persuade my better judgement and make me swelter from the pure delight of it.... is it possible then?
Little Sonia says it is,
she cries "mama mia" and dreams of sucking while she sleeps... she dreams anyway, for her name is reminiscent of "sonio" or "sonyo"... to sleep, perchance to DREAM.

and here is where my heart lies

With these bits of clay and glass so earthen, and animal... they almost call out loud to me.

they struggled into their journey, sure as i did, continue to do so...
And i am blessed to have such lovely things with which to occupy my broken soul To heal me up and make me (almost) whole

Got revived again

the baby who almost came to be within me,

a share little someone, who i prayed and prayed to let go of, whose face i saw in many a dreamy moment, whose skin would have smelled a bit of the blue mediterranian, even if his skin were white as mine...

and the universe opened up the day that God saw fit to have him wait for another moment, in which to be alive... The sun shone ever brighter, and the air breathed oh so easier. And now i live in wonder and i heal and heal some more....

and one day i will be whole
and one day
i will be whole

and one day

i will be whole

and one day i will be whole

and one day i will be whole

and one day i will be whole
and one day i will be whole

and one day i will be whole

recovering chitown and lions

the descent into chicago
came so long after the new year
even the chinese had celebrated
with dragons and fire cracked before then

and patti griffin sang
at the wonderful warfield
melodies ensconced in turmoil
and conditioning to a better mindset

i spoke with Livia
of the north brazilian ever summer
about medicine and politics
green energy, and metaphisics, and
of all things, scrapbooking

i retreated with the folks who pay all of my bills
about business ethics and policy
( as exciting as it sounds )
had damn good meals
Avec my sweet surprise
and time for myself
almost
and welcomed the return home
more than ever,
while it poured down around us
on the tarmack awaiting liftoff
( connecting in LA is a bitch
if you want something other than McD's for dinner
and when you're surrounded by twenty people
all waiting for the seat you hope for
everybody waiting for the same reasons
or for lack of a better idea )

SPRING is now upon us
and time rolled forward yet again
i am checking off my list so slowly

refinement comes with each passing day
my little lion cub made it through the fire safely

and he's no worse for the ware

in fact, he and all of his fine friends made of the earth will one day find cozy homes in appreciative hands and i hope they serve as only the beginning of a mastery over the challenge to mold life from clay and infuse it with my fusion of energy and spitfire; elbow grease & gen mai breakfast breaks. this is only the beginning of the centering of my long wandering soul. these small fragments of me take the precident of my heart and mind these days, and while nothing else suffers for it, long live my days as a ceramicist! Cheers to spring and the long days of summer that so soon lie ahead.

ps: my japanese maple has been reawakened and the little leaves sprouting are a sure reason to rejoice, two years and still kickin'... my jasmine strands winding melancholy through the deck rails all show many blossoms, fragrent and freshly alive to the moonlight.. it is a reminder of the house of Sir Frances, which Tess will remember well, awash in a wall of jasmine overlooking the heart of SF. This is where i left my heart too.. except i haven't left yet. Perhaps i never will, but that seems unlikely.