Category Archives: Uncategorized

If I have only one piece of advice to give in my whole life, it is this:

Hang out with violet.  She’ll delight you, and she may just save your life.

Check out why here:

http://elementallife.org/2011/05/19/recipe-for-delight/

I’ll be writing more about violet coming up, including an elixir recipe, and a sparkling-with-life soup recipe.

Thanks to five genius friends and anonymous coder, this blog will soon redirect you to my new, beautiful website: Art + Nature = Magic

Right now I’m in my writer’s cave working on a series of posts on natural aphrodisiacs, a new full-length play, and a series of posts on herbs by the seasons (and other projects).  I keep slipping outside to be with the plants… especially beloved violet!

I am finishing Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge with a whimper.  As a recovering perfectionist, this is an opportunity to practice a little messiness (I suppose. Grudgingly.)

I appreciate anyone who may be reading these hastily written words at the end of what I imagine is a very full month for everyone.  I have to get to sleep as I am going to ring in the new year with a full day of meditation.  Hurray!  I hope to come back to some of these questions in the following week, as I’ve been blogging them in my mind the last ten days as I’ve been immersed in holiday fun, travel, and a little holiday trauma too.

December 21 Project. What did you start this year that you’re proud of?
So many things… This was a year of starting and finishing.  One of those things is still a secret, but it involves a pact to actually make money writing, as well as an opportunity to collaborate with some brilliant women, and to (I hope) write something that helps people.

December 22 Startup. What’s a business that you found this year that you love? Who thought it up? What makes it special? 1)  Emc2 Emmett McCarthy see ‘best shop post’.
                                      2) Grand Street CSA (my CSA) Community Supported Agriculture.  So grateful to be a part of this movement to eat slow, local food.  It isn’t a fad.  Its an enormous improvement on the grocery store for my health, the health of the planet, and my wallet too. 

December 23 Web tool. It came into your work flow this year and now you couldn’t live without it. It has simplified or improved your online experience.  Thanks to a good friend, I now have technology  that is up to date for 2006!  I have a phone that is also a blackberry type device.  No more bulky filofax.

December 24 Learning experience. What was a lesson you learned this year that changed you?
Someone tried to take credit for my work.  I stood my ground and got the credit I deserved.  Don’t mess with a Taurus.
 
December 25 Gift. What’s a gift you gave yourself this year that has kept on giving?
Through meditation I’ve been developing the witness self.  This is the best present ever ever ever.

December 26 Insight or aha! moment. What was your epiphany of the year?  Too many.  Today’s insight was that I have looked at my writing as something that people sometimes admire (really– it isn’t all choppy and full of awkwardly constructed sentences when I write more than a first draft), but I had not seen it as anything that could have the potential to be truly healing, even though I’ve written things (especially poems) that people have expressed thanks for receiving.  Its time to look at my writing as  part of the medicine I have to offer.  It can be that.  Why not?

December 27 Social web moment. Did you meet someone you used to only know from her blog? Did you discover Twitter? Yes I discovered Twitter.  I discovered it– or more like I chose to join in– because when my dad’s secretary had to leave suddenly he was left completely helpless, having stubbornly refused to learn basic things about technology over the years as a private practice lawyer now in his 60′s. He used to refuse to ‘learn how to use the google’.  He is learning now, but its a steep curve.  So basically I was frightened into jumping into the fray for fear of being left behind, and I’m very glad I did.

December 28 Stationery. When you touch the paper, your heart melts. The ink flows from the pen. What was your stationery find of the year? Danielle LaPorte’s cards are gorgeous.  They are even more beautiful in real life than they are online, as the paper is thick and luscious, and the fonts are just so big and juicy.  I gave the fanfuckingtastic card to a friend starting a new business.  My friend cannot swear.  She says that she’d like to, but her mom put a curse on her and she can’t get the words out.  She put the card where she can see it every day.’This is IT!’ she said when I gave it to her.  ‘This is THE CARD! I’m putting it on my altar.’ I love cards, I give them to friends all the time, and I’ve never gotten a reaction like that before.

December 29 Laugh. What was your biggest belly laugh of the year?  I have heard that jokes are some of the hardest things to remember.  I can remember laughing until I was screaming and pounding the floor on many separate occasions with three beautiful people.  What we were laughing about I can’t tell you.  But it was very funny.  I’ll have to do better next year with remembering these things.

December 30 Ad. What advertisement made you think this year?  I’m a fan of AdBusters magazine, and was fascinated by their corporate logo/ leaf shape test.  There are two black and white squares on the page, one filled with corporate logos, the other with leaf shapes, all just in outline.  I was able to name most of the leaves, but also all of the corporate labels.  Most of the people I showed it to could name all of the labels and few of the leaves.

December 31 Resolution you wish you’d stuck with. (You know, there’s always next year…) I’m pretty good at sticking to resolutions.  I think it is the confidence that comes with being an ex-smoker.  Somehow, doing that made me feel that I could do anything I set my mind to.  This year I stuck to my writing every day resolution, which was major, as well as some smaller ones.  I did say that I wanted to have more parties, and I had exactly one, which was one more than the year before.  This year I’ll be taking a page out of Gretchen Ruben’s book and have more ‘laid back gatherings’, which are less overwhelming.

Happy New Year.  I’ll be blogging again at least twice weekly starting next week.  It has been such a pleasure discovering great writers and fascinating people through this community that Gwen Bell has been fostering.  Yay Gwen!  Yay bloggers!

These prompts are from Gwen Bell’s December Blogging Challenge.  I’m playing catch up after a very full week of artistic output on my play, energy spent on my herbal biz, dancing in a performance, and in case that sounds like too much fun, really thrashing out a tricky situation.  Here online  I was getting carried away with reading everyone’s amazing posts and noodling around on twitter at all hours of the night.   I had to chose between blogging from midnight until 4 AM or sleep, and sleep won out.  But maybe I can learn to both sleep and blog.  Yet to be determined.

Rush of the year: 
Hearing the play I worked to complete for five years read aloud for the first time by an actor.

Best Packaging:
Glass milk bottle.  Elegant.  Completely reusable. The milk tastes infinitely better.    There used to be one type of milk that I could find in a glass bottle here in NYC.  Now there are two kinds readily available in my neighborhood,  Ronnybrook Farm and Milk Thistle Farm.  My hope is that the glass milk bottle craze will sweep the nation. It tastes so good, the reusable bottle gives you a happy feeling, and you can pretend you’re on Mad Men.

Tea of the Year:
I’m an herbalist, a.k.a. a tea-ologist.  I’m known for my tea blends, and I own 4 teapots of various sizes and actually use all of them regularly.  My very favorite tea isn’t a blend, though, its Linden flower I gathered myself from the trees in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.  You know in June when all of a sudden the air smells like honey as you pass under these enormous shade trees often buzzing with bees?  That’s linden.  I love it so much that I named my dog after the tree Tilia, the Latin name for Linden.  Its not cultivated in the U.S., though its highly medicinal (studies have found it lowers blood pressure) and is also relaxing, as well as simply delicious.  You can buy it from Mountain Rose Herbs, though its imported from Eastern Europe, where it has been a beloved tisane for centuries.  Proust writes about Linden tea with his madeleine in Swan’s Way.

Word or Phrase:
2009 was… transformational.  9 is a number of change. After a run of some (10) entropic-feeling years I finished my play, wrote 30 poems in 30 days, started a novel, danced a solo in front of an audience, began the process of founding a not-for-profit, expanded my business, and finally made homemade mayonnaise. 

Best Shop:
EMc2 Emmett McCarthy
Emmett McCarthy’s designs are timeless, current, sophisticated, and a little tongue-in-cheek.  What Holly Golightly or a young Elizabeth Taylor would wear today.  Michelle Obama has caught on.  Emmett uses beautiful fabrics in both neutrals and deep jewel tones, with exquisite tailoring done right in New York City where his boutique is located.   One of his winter coats boasts a silk lining.   Those kinds of luxurious details make me feel both dressed to kill and also completely comfortable.  I have one of his gorgeous coats now, and plan on adding another piece to my wardrobe just as soon as I can.

Best Car Ride of the Year: the subway.

I  understand driving a car really fast.  Driving makes more sense to me as a sport than as a mode of transportation.  For the latter I’d rather walk, snowshoe, ride a horse, a bike, or in the city take the train.  I love the fact that if you live in Manhattan you don’t have to own a car.

This summer I took a long road trip with my partner, and we drove through bizarre little towns north of Highway 2 in Minnesota.  It was a glimpse of what driving must have been like before highways.  We got a feel for which towns were wealthy with their freshly painted Scandinavian inspired gingerbread moldings on the buildings, and which were not: ‘Spooner Blows!’.  We drove through brat days and past spaghetti dances.  We goofed, laughed, listened to good jazz, but unlike when we’re sitting by a lake having a great time, or at our kitchen table, I felt slightly queasy and stiff from immobility. So ultimately I left the car knowing that I’ll always need to live somewhere where I don’t have to drive because no matter how much fun driving can be, its still driving.

Even though the MTA has been really shady lately with their fare hikes and service cuts, I’m so grateful for the New York City Subway System. 

Here’s my favorite ode to the train:  Duke Ellington & Ella Fitzgerald, Take the A Train.

I live in a very small apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Its not the smallest apartment, that would be this one, but it isn’t a lot of space for two people, two dogs, and frequent house-guests.    I have to purge about twice a year, or I’ll go insane. 

 I’ve been inspired by the great de-cluttering posts on Communicatrix’s blog, as well as her book recommendation, Clutter Busting by Brooks Palmer.  I also love Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui.  Both books give insight into what goes on emotionally when we hoard stuff. 

The often arduous process of finding new homes for my underused things has made me more conscious of my purchases, and even of the gifts I accept.  I’ve pared down a lot.

The deepest purge I’ve ever done was this last one.    I took a look at my bookshelves and thought, ‘I can’t possibly get rid of one more book.’ But I didn’t have space on the shelf for the box that stores the first handwritten draft of a novel I’m working on.  I was subconsciously telling myself that my own writing didn’t belong on a bookshelf.  A bunch of books found new homes.

The moment I started this purge, my outworn relationships began to shift too.  I found myself letting go of some people, reconfiguring my relationships with others.  The process is still going on, and is likely to take awhile, but the new found clarity in my relationships feels even more freeing than the extra three feet of space available for yoga asanas.

How about you?  What was your best change in the place you live this year?  If you are part of the Best ’09 challenge, I’d love it if you’d leave a link to your blog, and if not, write your answer in the comments.

This was one of those books where, after reading a few sentences, I thought to myself, ‘I’m in love. In love.  Where have you been hiding, Angela Carter?   I mean, there must be a road named after you somewhere, right?’

While reading The Bloody Chamber, her book of short stories based on famous fairy-tales, I wanted to eat her words, smear her beautiful sentences all over myself and lick them off one by one. 

If you love Thomas Hardy, as I do, you’ll love Angela Carter.  Like Hardy, she writes prose with the exactitude of a poet.  Her stories are full of vivid imagery, but they are also plot driven.  There is nothing flowery or excessive about them.  They keep your heart racing. Most of the stories in The Bloody Chamber are recognizable but twisted up in all kinds of fascinating ways, probing at the psychological and mythological depths of fatal attraction.  The title story, based on the Bluebeard tale, is chilling with a bit of wicked humor.  Puss-in-Boots, in contrast, is a naughty romp. 

Angela Carter died of cancer in 1992 at the height of her powers, which might at least partly account for why she is not more widely known outside of Great Britain. 

Salman Rushdie was a friend and huge fan.  Here’s a link to Rushdie’s tribute, which gives a nice overview of her entire body of work: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/27/specials/carter-rushdie.html

Rushdie suggests that Carter’s fame might snowball after her death.  I hope it’s happening.  She deserves it, and the world needs her tremendous gifts.

Day 2 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge.  The prompt for the day was ‘Best restaurant experience ‘09.’  I was going to write a post tonight about a cavernous, Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome type restaurant in New York City.  I had avoided going to this place since its opening several years ago because I’d told myself that I don’t like big flashy restaurants.  I like intimate quiet ones.  I live inside the spectacle that is Manhattan and don’t crave more of it.  But then one night the stars aligned and I found myself there in the middle of fashion week no less, packed with designers and models in neon stilettos. 

It was an amazing night.  My friends and I joined a birthday party full of Londoners on holiday at a long communal table, and ate delectable dumplings dripping with exotic sauces while being expertly cared for by friendly staff.  There was none of the cool, sneering attitude I had expected to find in a place designed to see and be seen.

Then I remembered that I knew the guy who had probably made most of the restaurant’s final hiring decisions.  I had worked with him as a waiter years ago.   He had the rare ability to bring up both the morale and the efficiency of an entire crew of jaded, exhausted performers, misfits, and immigrant restaurant workers.   He’d thrown me several life rafts of encouragement during my first wobbly weeks of working at a big midtown restaurant fresh out of school and freshly dealing with being just another waiter/aspiring artist in the city.

Kindness was clearly valued in the staff here.  Wow. (I hadn’t let on that I knew any managers, so the kindness couldn’t be chalked up to deferential treatment).

I’d cut myself off from ever going to this big restaurant before because in a blanket statement I’d decided, ‘I don’t like restaurants like that’.   This is what I was going to write about, but then the news of the New York Senate’s vote 38-24 against the gay marriage amendment came in, and after dinner tonight I crawled into bed and turned out the light.  My body felt weighted down by lead balloons.

I had stupidly thought that my beloved New York recognized the immense contributions of its gay and lesbian constituency.  Doesn’t every straight identified person know a gay couple, a gay family? The anti-gay rights people are cutting themselves off from hundreds of thousands of loving families.  It’s like my bias against the restaurant that turned out to be my “favorite restaurant experience ‘09”.  I had assumed that I knew what it was all about without ever having set foot in the door.  The no voters and the people they represent are stuck in straitjackets of rigid beliefs.

Over time, the 38 no votes will be seen to be on the wrong side of history.  But in the present, there are families who are denied health and life insurance from their partners’ employers, and there are citizens and commitments that are not being honored with the respect they deserve. It just so happens that the manager of that great restaurant has a long-term same-sex partner, and they have a child together.  Today New York has said to them, and to countless others, ‘we don’t care about you’.   This has to change.

I am stepping up to the Best of  09 blogging challenge put out by the wonderful social media maven & yogini Gwen Bell. Each day in December she gives a prompt.  It is a great kick in the pants to get into the habit of blogging more frequently, as well as a way to give thanks for some amazing experiences, people, and things that have been part of my life this year.  My goals: 1. Don’t bore people who might read it. 2. Answer each prompt. 3. Inspiration–give it & get it.   December 1st is Best Trip 09. 

I tried writing a prose piece about this trip, but the experience didn’t lend itself to it.  So, in a really surprising move for me, here’s a poem-y kind of a thing.

an island somewhere off the coast of South Carolina

no t.v.
no cellphone
no laptop
no ipod
no commercials
no catalogues
no billboards

salt air perfume
bones melt into warm sand
the waves steady exhale
an invitation to do the same.
pick up a book
or put it down
read poetry or gossip
stare at the shifting clouds
lie in a hammock
sit in a grey cedar rocking chair
and watch the sunrise
listen to someone play the guitar
or walk silently through the surf under the moon

laugh with loved ones
beloved conspirators.
stirrers of inspiration.
acolytes in the church of beauty.

share simple food
fresh tomatoes
fried okra
boiled shrimp
caramel cake
conversation
about important things:
dreams especially.

ride the waves
play like otters
or runaways

sit on the dock at sunset
creekside lowtide
the green grasses deepening
against the fuchsia sky.

release of what is not
was not
could not be
what is over
get down into the dirt
back to the earth heart
the worm core
that center place
where all things blossom
blue fungi blooms
around the heart wood

there is life inside of death
the spider creeping over white eyes
terrifies because it is so gentle
the way the rain is gentle
as it seeps into the mud
creating momentary sculptures
mud people first people
a frothing pulsing hot birth
bursting through the carapace.

It is not the birth we expected.

I want my job to pay my rent and a plane ticket to a meditation retreat in Bali. I also want it to be ecstatically satisfying, and this desire has had me holding every failure, success, regret, and thought pattern up to the light for scrutiny.

I’m getting there. I love what I do, but I’ve been trying to incorporate more of my artistic self into my herbal business because bringing out people’s creativity is a core piece of who I am, I’m great at it, and many of my clients tell me that they want help in this area of their lives. However the mystery remains; how to make it happen?

Rilke says that we need to love the questions themselves. I’ve been a Rilke fan since 14 and he’s always been right. But with my burning question searing a hole in my head, I decided to sign up for a group firestarter session with Danielle LaPorte, the author of Style Statement, and White Hot Truth, a blog that has been helping me get to the heart of the matter. Danielle is genius at inspiring entrepreneurs to fuel their businesses and lives with true passion.

About 19 women and one relaxed man gathered in the beautiful home of novelist and blogger Aidan Donnelley Rowley, to learn how to capitalize on work we love. I walked in fairly terrified, intimidated by thinking of entrepreneurs leap years ahead of me, but mostly made sleepless and queasy by the feeling that I was on the precipice of some deep change. Change is scary to me. It helped that everyone in the room radiated excitement and warmth.

Danielle was reassuring without being cloying. She spoke of the Bardo, the Tibetan Buddhist word for the liminal states of being: in-between places, limbo. I relaxed then. I reminded myself that I’m fairly comfortable with limbo. The first prize I ever won was for limbo queen when I was three. The one I’m experiencing right now in my business is normal. Deep exhale.

Danielle, like Rilke, believes in questions. Here’s a sampling:

• If you dropped acid and wrote your business plan, what would it look like?
  Write that first. Then write your business plan.
• What are people interested in when you talk?
• What do people thank you for?

Danielle was also very full of practical advice about how to increase your blog’s subscription list, how to budget time efficiently, etc. Her attention to the aesthetic and spiritual aspects of business (i.e. truth and beauty are as important as the bottom line) resonates with me deeply, so she’s a perfect teacher. And if (the boss of me) artistic self would rather hear it from a dread-headed philosopher in a grey cashmere sweater dress and green snakeskin leggings, then I’m very lucky such a one exists.

By the end of the three hours, with the help of some of the other wise ones in the room, I began to see where I’m headed.

** Awesome image found on Max “Bunny” Sparber’s site

I was startled by the appearance of a pretty English boy dawdling at a green market stand in NYC recently.

He was so pretty that he looked like an alien. His eyes radiated blueness and his blond hair gleamed. His teeth were so white that they made the sound of a struck metal triangle when he smiled.

As it turned out, he had recently been hired to act on Guiding Light, the oldest running television show in existence, which had just been canceled. The hearty gal at the farm stand had little sympathy for his despair over the lost gig, but I did, because I am sad to see the show go.

I remember watching it with my mother and grandmother in my grandparents’ place when they still got away with calling me ‘wee Kate’.

I’d sit on a little embroidered stool drinking tea out of a porcelain cup and eating smiley faced cookies (the best, which also don’t exist anymore) while we watched Phillip and Beth’s impossible love unravel as evil, evil Roger schemed.

I remember flipping on the T.V. in college to learn that Beth was coming back from the dead yet again. The storylines recycled themselves infinitely.

My family was made up of British ex-pats, and as Guiding Light came on at tea time that was the soap we watched.

My great grandmother had listened to it on the radio whenever she was in the States. My grandmother had picked up the habit, as had my mother.

I guess I dropped the ball. I got complacent. I didn’t watch. I thought that it would always be; like the sun. But the show’s symbol was a lighthouse, and lighthouses are always being torn down.