Not Falling Yet

Feeling in love with this moment.  Body ready for rest.

Bathing in the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves. Writing that made me think of a poem my grandmother told my I had written it when I was a kid.

Today is a day for
Dancing under the shadows of
Silver trees.

She said it was brilliant.

You Can Call Me Anytime

Dear Reader whomever you are,                                                                         July 21, 2014

I realized that I had been making my notes a little on the dark side and had been thinking about setting up some time to write about things a little less heavy hearted. (I have lovely pictures and journeys to share.)  I told myself the next post will be dedicated to beauty.  Yet something happened along the way, inspiration.  Thank you for your kindness. And here is something beautiful.  It's titled "Conduit for Love" and helped me transform the title of my online journal.  Here is also a little story about about the transformation of heartache.

Chrystal Brooke

  

    My life really changed after my mother died.  When I looked towards the future I had to come face to face with the new reality.  A reality that meant, my mom wouldn't be there if I got married, my mom wouldn't be there if I had a child, my child wouldn't have a grandmother from my side of the family, I wouldn't get presents that were filled with stuff that one buys at the ABC store ( a hawaiian chain ) and I wouldn't have someone to talk to whenever I needed someone to talk to.  At the present time that was really hard.  When the shit hit the fan in my life I didn't know who I could talk to.  My mother had always been my go to.  No matter what I knew that if I was having a hard time that I could always call my mom and she would listen.

     As time passed by I began searching for that person that I could always talk to no matter what, I searched for it in family members, co-workers, anyone willing to let me pour my soul out to them.  Along this journey, I really realized that having someone to talk to whenever you needed someone are some pretty big shoes to fill.  

     The other day I was reflecting on my mother, the anniversary of her death is fast approaching which means a time to look at my story straight in the face.  As I was walking down the sidewalk on a beautiful and sunny day.  I reflected upon those times in my life when I needed to call someone.  I felt comfort knowing that I have at least one person that lets me do that, my adopted Pappi.  I basically just tormented him with love and kindness until he let me into his big curmudgeon heart.  He listens to me and torments me about everything that goes on in my life.  I feel so blessed to have such a good friend.  I reflected on other people in my life as well.  The ones that have given me unconditional love.  After my mother passed away, for a while I didn't know if anyone would ever love me unconditionally again.

Turns out there are people that love me unconditionally and people that can call whenever I want.

     The next day following my sunny sidewalk reflection day, I check my voicemail and it's a thick tongued man whose voice is unrecognizable to me.  Turns out it was my Godfather getting back to me. A couple days earlier I felt the inspiration to call him, it had been seven years since we last spoke.  I went into a box that was labeled "Mom's Paperwork Don't Open" and found her address book.  I flipped through the pages of her address book, seeing her handwriting get shakier and shakier as she got more sick.  Cried over her handwriting and found the number for my Godfather and called him.  Turns out, his number is already in my phone.  He leaves me a message with a different phone number after all he is in the arctic circle.  He tells me how happy he is to hear from me, how he has so many questions and how I can call him whenever I want.  Those magic words that sing to me "Call whenever you want."

     It took a couple days of phone tag and hearts worth of courage to call him back.  Yet I just did.  I just got off the phone with my godfather.  He tells me about how he has so many questions, so many memories of my mom and how he wants to talk in person rather than on the phone about all that stuff.  He tells me again that I can call him whenever I want and he tells me "you know, its my job to look over you." My response was "Thank you for letting me know that."

     I am old enough and have had my heart broken enough to know that there are truly no happy endings, only happy moments in time.  I am unsure of where this relationship will go.  Unsure if it is a healthy one and afraid of trusting and making myself vulnerable, time has proven that it's not always the best thing to do.  We have plans to hang out on one of his boats, he works at sea, and he has asked me to contact him before I go to Burning Man or leave the country.  He expressed endless gratitude for me reaching out and I apologized that it took me seven years to do so.  

     With all the fear, anxiety, hopes, dreams bundled up together, I am willing to take on this new chapter in my life, getting to know my godfather better and how that will effect my life.  I tell you one thing, it sure does feel fucking great to be loved.  To the friends, families, animals, sea, mountains, sky and sun that love me my gratitude can not be summed up in a collection of words but beats throughout my chest and back the strong feeling of love. Namaste.

What I Did When I Was Not Making Art

One day I found myself on the phone with my lovely cousin.  I was about to tell her about how since my life was so crazy with the loss of my art studio and having to move homes as well that I hadn't made any art.  I caught myself right before I said that because I knew that it wasn't true.  I may not have manifested a profound body of work, yet I had been making art.  I have a little black Moleskin that I carry with my in my purse.  When I had the spare time, drinking a ginger beer at a bar or waiting for something I would pull out my little book and do a drawing.  After I told my cousin how I was about to say a false statement, we continued on talking about how sometimes we don't give ourselves credit for what we are doing.  We often think that we are not doing something because it doesn't live up to our grand perceptions that we had created, while truthfully though, we had been working on something.  So here are some drawings that I did during a pretty busy time in my life.

I bet there are somethings that you don't give yourself credit for.  I bet if you sit down and think about it more that you will actually have some of the dreams that you've wanted, maybe not the form you wanted, but still, some of the same aspirations.

7 Needles & Jillian Mayer

Two cool things happened today.
               
             1. I got this awesome acupuncture treatment that rocked my body in some pretty radical ways.  I could feel the energy move, disappear, relocate, transition into various intensities, manifest with various sensations, and then go away.  I had waves of energy moving through my body from head to toe.  My throat tightened.  I coughed.  The heals of my feet began to hurt as if a lot of weight was resting on them.  I could feel energy moving in my ear canal.  Different parts of my head began to hurt.  My eyes fell shut upon themselves my body relaxing and then abruptly they reopened, wanting to stay open they focused on the halos forming around the light fixtures in the ceiling.  I don't think I blinked for a while.  I felt circular energy forming around each needle in my body. Three in my belly, two on my belly and two on my feet.  She asked me to come back in a couple of days and wear a tank top.  She was going to do my back. Before my session started,  she told me that my session could possibly be pretty intense.  We exchanged words that I can't remember, me trying to understand her.  Then I said "like the energy that gets moved when reiki is being performed on the body." "Yes!" she said.  When it was over.  I told her that it was freaking radical, bizarre, and wild and that I was totally into it.  I could see her smile and nod.



I am sure more than two cool things happened today.  It's just that right when these happened I felt my world being rocked.  May be a bit dramatic.  However, those are the words I chose.

              2. I discovered Jillian Mayer.

This was my first introduction

Ok, now I look at the hits on this video and it appears that over 2,000,000 people have watched it. Whatever! I don't care! I saw it for the first time and was excited to see a young women doing something strange that I am pretty sure would knock all my freak friends into total freak love.

I have for some time been a creator of scary art.  A teacher once took his students to one of my shows, it was a commentary on sanity and insanity in society.  I asked him what they had thought, he told me, "They asked if you were insane." Now I don't think Jillian Mayer is insane. Heck, I don't even know the gal.  But what I do know is that she produces odd, strange, sometimes scary, avant grade, bizarre videos that sometimes have a pop song to them.

I love a woman that is willing to put a bunch of crap on her face.  I mean most of us do on a regular basis.
Inner Voice: "Chrystal, that is using your judgment mind and is rather untrue and not very kind."
Oh well I am commenting on a video by an artist that commentates on society so opinions and loose language are running a bit free in my world.  Moreover, I love that she is a face drawer! I mean she really is! And so am I!  Many of my projects have involved face painting, body painting, and not in the whimsical oh I am a Faerie connected with nature kind of way, instead, the I am not afraid to make a statement kind of way.  One that makes me uncomfortable and could make you too. Though I promise, I am not doing it on purpose.  I really appreciate how this video is done in her living room to further imulate  tutorials on youtube and how she continues to reference a way of integration and repulsion from the technological world.

  "Scenic Jogging" created some fear in me and I love that.  I love when art makes me feel something.  An inanimate object is creating emotions that validate that I am freaking alive, and not in some cellphone, tv, alcohol, drug, sex, shopping, or food induced coma.  Go Fear! You really rocked it this time!

  When I watched an interview of her she talks about how in this video she plays a character that is is running after the unattainable.  I am reminded of reading an article of how westerners will not ever be happy because they can not enjoy their current state of attainment.  Meaning that they have a dream, they work very hard to reach it, they achieve the dream, and the amount of time that they spend enjoying that state of being is much smaller than easterners.  Instead, Westerners move onto, creating a wonder of what it is that they can achieve next.  There for there is a long period of dissatisfaction in our lives.

Speaking of which, I bet you didn't know you needed a new coffee mug?

On a very quite sidetrack to something that is a bit off track but I felled compelled to write it out anyways.  Well here it goes,. After getting home from my acupuncture appointment,  I had one memory from my past repeat in my head.  It was when one of my best friends and I finally connected for the very first time.  We didn't really know each other and had been doing the whole, "We should hang out some time," for about nine months.  Then one night on the steps outside of the art building we had a discussion on energy.  How everything was energy.  How we could feel the space between people as energy.  How we felt energy in our body. How the stones that we were standing on were even energy.  It was one of those moments, where you look over at a person and realize that you have understood something beyond words.  Something that goes down to the core.

Well I could go on more, and so more properly and with better grammar and stuff with a more reserved way of showing some new found loves, but obviously I didn't feel like it so I gut all pumped up and now I got to stop because I need to slow down the blood pumping system and call it a night.  Seriously, my heart is beating pretty hard to me.

Is there something that has rocked your world? Is there another artist out there that almost the majority of the internet knows besides myself that you could open my art loving eyes to? Anything got you all excited that you didn't care and threw standards of how to be out the window? I'd love to hear about it. Or hey, how about you invisible data searching machines, no not you if your a real person, I am talking about the websites that traffic my sight that I am pretty sure are not real people, think about how technology affects your relation to mankind.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQz4k2_wseo

Dream ON!

I just reread my post and I am kind of embarrassed how I talk about myself a lot while referencing her work.  I guess I just got excited about "getting to know" someone over the internet that reminded me of myself in some ways.  A kindred art spirit on another plain.  Oh, how stuff comes out of my head when I don't refine or restrain it...

A Drawing For Today

           Sometimes in life, we pick things up and then we drop them.  Sometimes it's a bowl of cereal, a crush, a style, a diet, a job or a hobby.  For a big part of my life I drew.  I would draw for hours, forgetting about time, the world around me, my problems.  Fully pulled into whatever marks I was placing on the paper.

            I haven't finished a drawing for a while.  During my drawing drought,  I have done some scribbles, doodled while talking on the phone, started something, didn't like it, then either quickly turned the page to either stare at it and close it or make a couple marks and then move onto something else.  I couldn't find a drawing inside of me.  There was nothing to pull out. The whole process was extremely uncomfortable. 

            Several years ago, I went through a writers block.  It happened sometime after my mother passed away.  I didn't write anything for several years.  Not a page in a journal, not a postcard, not a holiday note, or a wish for a Birthday.  I finally wrote a birthday card.  The process was painful.  My handwriting was shaky and my writing seemed forced and extremely unnatural. I would even go so far as to call it painful.  1 year later,  I was filling up a notebook a month with thoughts, desires, dreams, nightmares, obsessions and memories.

            Well, on November 11, 2013,  I finished a drawing! In fact I did two, but the first one I consider more to be my warm up.  For the sake of it though, we can go ahead and say I finished two.  To my astonishment, the process wasn't painful, wasn't forced, nor was my mind  filled with thoughts of judgement.  I simply went along,  made some marks and continued till I said that it was done. I accepted it for what it was.  Not passing judgement was a relief I wasn't even mindful of at the time.

             Someone famous once said something along the lines of "If you don't know what to draw, just draw lines. If you still don't know what to draw, draw more lines" that is of course loosely quoted since I can't even remember who said it. Draw On!