Tough Love and Trying to be Kind

Today I noticed that many of my blog posts are confrontational. They rage against the media or question assumptions. They often "take to task" things I love like yoga, paganism, motherhood, and feminism.

Most of my posts are inspired by something I read on-line and are a kind of distanced rebuttal to a casual phrase or concept that strikes my mind at a strange angle. I blame it on being an English major. I guess I'm not inspired to write unless I'm arguing, critiquing, or debating something.

However, with today's post, I want the world to know that I do it out of love!

I love my communities so much and so hard that I want them to rise. I want to peel back the layers and find the beautiful hearts beating underneath. I love them so much that I can't ignore something that bothers me. I have to understand it, and writing these little social critiques has become my path toward understanding.

In Outsider communities, there's a big impulse to always get along. After all, don't we get criticized and demeaned enough by the outside world? Shouldn't we create a safe space where no one fears criticism? No. (Here I go again!) That is how dogma and conformity are born.

I love my communities and I want to help them grow. I hope to give voice to thoughts that I imagine others must feel. I ask for more than prerequisite acceptance....from myself, others, and all things.

And this is why I will always call out sexism in science fiction films. This is why I will always get pissed off at websites that say yoga is for everyone, but inevitably feature only pictures of a slender white women. That is why I refuse to read pagan books that don't cite their sources and try to wrangle semantics with hoop dancers.

I love it all, but love requires thought. Love flourishes in the fresh air of discourse, thoughtful disagreement, and constructive criticism.

I hope to write in such a way simultaneously critiques and celebrates. (It's like being a Star Wars fan, you know? I've loved and petted these things so much that I've frayed the fibers and must pick at the wayward strings.) I hope to always write thoughtfully and in kindness.

Furthermore, I hope that when I do overstep the boundaries of thoughtfulness and kindness someone will have the bravery and beauty to speak out. That is, after-all, it's own form of love.

When we're willing to speak out, to disagree, and make our voices heard, we are supporting one another and our beloved communities as we strive toward equality, wisdom, grace, and compassion. Blessed be!

Hipsters in Stone

French photographer Léo Caillard and art director Alexis Persani have taken the hipster passion for all things vintage to a whole new level with Hipsters in Stone. Caillard photographed some of the most iconic sculptures at the Louvre in Paris. Then he photographed jean and t-shirt clad friends in the same poses. Persani worked a bit of digital alchemy and the resulting figures look equally equipped to orate at the agora or strum guitar at a coffee shop open mic. night.

Meleager by Louis-Simon Boizot
Doesn't every gal dream of a man who can bring home the bacon?

Agora 2?
 

You can view the rest of the collection here. 

Fairy Gardening 101

A fairy garden by Kleas

Fairy gardens are magical spaces inhabited by plants, miniature structures, and imagination. Fairy gardens are often planted in containers. Many parents, especially in the natural parenting and homeschooling communities, use fairy gardens as imagination stations or nature tables for their children. Other enthusiasts create fairy gardens to enliven indoor spaces and patios. Larger fairy gardens can be built into natural landscapes like trees. They can be added to pre-existing flower beds, altars, or rock gardens. Though fairy garden kits are widely available online, they are often do-it-yourself projects that inspire both adults and children to create whimsical landscapes from natural materials.

The following lists and links will help jumpstart your fairy garden project.

The "fairy factory."
Use a saw to slice a stout branch or sapling into disks.
The disks make great tabletops, chair
seats, and bases for other structures. 

Gathering Materials For Your Garden Structures:

Creating a fairy garden shouldn't be expensive. You can create amazing fairy houses, furniture, and landscapes using reclaimed materials and items gathered from nature.

Recycled and Reclaimed Materials

• Cardboard cylinders - Cover oatmeal containers with paper or birch bark to make fairy houses. Toilet paper and paper towel tubes can be added to smaller houses to transform them into towers and castles. 
• Terra-Cotta pots - whole pots become instant houses and fragments can be used as walls, stepping stones, or support for multi-layer container gardens
• Corks - use corks as bases for tables, bird baths, and more
• Scrap fabric - fabric scraps add a dash of color to your garden as fairy bedding, flags, and banners
• Plastic containers - burry a yogurt container to create a tiny pond in your garden

The possibilities are endless!

Finding Natural Materials

Next time you take a nature walk, keep your eyes open for lovely twigs, stones, shells, seed pods, nuts, dried plants, and pinecones.

Embellished pots, polymer clay mushrooms, & a twig fence

Early fall is the best time to find natural materials. Since many seeds, nuts, etc. have already dried and fallen, it lessens the temptation to pick living plants. Fairies walk lightly and thank the earth for her gifts. Fairy gardeners do too!

Crafting Supplies

• Glue Gun - Your glue gun will probably become your best friend as you delve into the world of fairy gardens. While professional miniaturists use a wide variety of glues for different materials, a glue gun will get you where you need to be, kennit? If you use hot glue, it's best to move your miniatures inside during rainy weather. If kids play in your fairy garden, expect a few miniatures to break. You can either return the natural materials to the earth or mend them. I feel that our ethereal fairy-friends would approve of this lesson in non-attachment. (You can find a detailed discussion of different glues here. 
• Polymer Clay - Polymer clay is inexpensive and you bake your work in the oven. Easy-peasy! With polymer clay you can embellish terra-cotta pots, make tiny mushrooms and flowers, or populate your garden with clay creatures.
• Wire Cutters or Loppers - Trim sticks and twigs down to size
• Craft moss- It's available in both synthetic and natural varieties. As I glue structures together, I stick moss to the spots where hot glue leaks through. It both covers the glue and gives the objects an earthy look.
• Pre-made miniatures - Why children have brought countless little toys to live in the fairy garden. You can also find wonderful and inexpensive little birds, flowers, and other objects at craft stores and online. 

Building the Garden

How To Build A Fairy Garden - Natural Parenting Tips
How To Build A Fairy Garden - Fairy In A Garden
How to Make Your First Fairy Garden (video)
How To Make A Fairy Garden - Magic Onions
Mini Spiral Garden - World in Green

Decorating the Garden

DIY Twig Furniture - Kleas
Make a Fairy Well - Juise
Make a Fairy House - Crafts by Amanda
Make a Fairy Tent - Anna Branford
Fairy Home Decore - The Magic Onion
Home For Fairies - Juise
Flower Fairy Peg Dolls - The Imagination Tree

Inspiration

Green Spirit Arts
The Enchanted World of Fairy Woodland 
The Magic Onion
Raven Moon Magic

Defining Flow

(This article has been expanded from my original post on hooping.org)

"Flow" is  term we tend to throw around a lot in the hooping community. We describe hoop-stars like Mona and Spiral as having "flow." We strive to cultivate it in our hoop-practice. But what exactly are we striving for? You see, when we talk about flow, we're actually talking about two different ideas that have become linked through digital alchemy.

On one hand, drawing on the work on  Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, hoopers conceptualize flow as a mental state where daily worries, time, self-criticism, and doubt drop away. The hooper enters a mind-state where s/he is completely immersed in the moment, in the movement. Many hoopers describe this state as a kind of heightened awareness where they reach beyond their normal limitations and they become one with the hoop. Artists in all different forms describe similar experiences and Chomsky studied those experiences to create his theories about "flow."

On the other hand, we also tend to use "flow" to describe a hooper whose skill, enthusiasm, and style communicate a sense easy grace or general bad-ass-ness. When someone appears to be totally blissing or rocking out, we say they have flow. In this case, we're describing fluidity, ease of movement, and flawless transitions. We're describing what their movement communicates to us, rather than their mind-state, because as much as a video can communicate emotion, we really have no idea what the hooper's actually experiencing.

It's important to distinguish between the two different meanings of "flow" because hoopers belong to a very visual community. We live in a visual society where Facebook, advertising, and Youtube have trained us to associate certain appearances with certain mind-states. We all want to be bad-ass (flow in the 2nd sense). We seek to awe a real or imagined audience.  We are, after all human, and part of what draws many folks to hooping is that it creates a space for us to be skillful, marvelous, and awe inspiring. And that's good!

However, when our community convolutes the appearance of flow with the mental experience of flow, we risk making that experience less accessible. Personal experience suddenly becomes linked to physical characteristics (like fluidity, beauty, and gracefulness) that have minimal correlation with a hooper's state of mind. These characteristics in turn create a rigid pre-conception of what flow looks like rather than what it feels like. Suddenly authentic self expression is replaced by the pressure to buy $100 dance pants and mime poses glimpsed in YouTube videos. Less insidiously, the mental experience becomes linked to a particular skill set or level of expertise beyond the reach of vast numbers of hoop dance enthusiasts.

Language is an amazing tool. It both shapes and is shaped by our reality and culture. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's conceptualization of flow has given us a marvelous word to describe the marvelous experience of being immersed in our art. Our language possesses an equal capacity to describe the physical characteristics that are often mislabeled as flow. We can describe those mind-boggling expressions of hoop-dance virtuosity in language that simultaneously honors bad-ass performance and leaves space for flow as an uninhibited mental-emotional experience.

At the deepest level, the level that sustains our spirit,  we want to experience the power and bliss of flow (in the 1st sense.) When we embrace flow as a state of mind, we reaffirm that anyone can experience a joyous psychological state at any point in their hoop journey.  We can experience it busting out super-tech tricks. We can experience it dancing. We can experience it getting lost in the counted circles of three-beat-weave drills. It need be neither beautiful nor refined because it transcends appearances.

I 1st tasted flow hooping to Bob Dylan when I only knew 3 hoop-moves. If I'd recorded that glorious, but undoubtedly clumsy, session, no one would have marveled and declared, "That girl has flow!"

But I did, because flow is in your head. Flow is in your heart.

Michelle Nayeli appears to embody a transcendental hoop experience, but
may, for all I know, be experiencing a dreadful foot cramp while she waits
for a friend to take this marvelous photo. 

. 

Who? Companions!

The Feminist Frequency imagines a spin off series where the ladies of the TARDIS team up for their own grand adventures. Go there NOW!

by Ch4rms

Pursuing Pleasure While Poor

It's bitter, but not surprising, how the creative, creek-stomping, count-your-blessings good life breaks down when there's not enough money to pay rent. The world is so skeptical of under-employed college graduates, artists, and low-income stay-at-home moms. At least once a week I read or hear a digital tirade against people like myself. You know…us parasites on food stamps? We unemployable college grads. who majored in English? We moms who simultaneously undermine capitalism and feminism because we’re raising our babies on less than $50,000 a year.

I confess: I made that number up because I’ve been poor so long I don’t even know what kind of income supports a household that can pay the bills every month.

So even on the best of days, it’s hard to justify the good life. It’s like you only get a ticket to live the dream once you’ve crossed some socio-economic threshold I don’t fully understand. It makes me wonder how the holistic healers of the world make ends meet. It makes me wonder if those brilliant women who post crochet tutorials ever have to pick up groceries from the open door.

I also find myself trapped in a double standard. I am compelled to make the world beautiful. I’m honored to give back to my community. I am often presented with opportunities to make connections and a little money from my hobbies.

But I’m broke and in my shame, I feel unable to give. I feel unable to pursuit those opportunities. On one level it’s a material problem. I can’t promote my hoop-dance classes at a local event if I don’t have printer paper to print flyers or am uncertain I’ll be able to swing the bill to rent a space. So there’s one opportunity lost under the proverb “you have to have money to make money.”

I understand the limitations created by the material-financial aspect of the struggle, but it’s the shame-component that’s insidious.Making connections, making art, stomping in the creek, that’s what life is made of. That’s free. That’s beautiful. That’s all I fucking have. Yet still the regular raging bombardment against the poor, like we’re villains for pursuing pleasure while poor. The glaring, continually cited, examples are cell phone, tattoos, and cars. The media starts screaming, “How DARE she walk into family services wearing nice jeans” like every poor woman should wear rags. Hypocrites hide their credit card debt under bottles of prescription anti-depressants while they condemn the 2% of Floridian food-stamp recipients who failed drug tests.

So I’m here to make class warfare. I’m proposing a key component that all my brush-ins with Marxism seem to ignore. I’m talking unpaid labor and beauty as cultural capital. Play every week at open mic.? You’re rich, my friend, because you give. Raising smart, beautiful babies? You’re a teacher, girlfriend, and deserve the status given to teachers. Keep a garden that showers your loved-one with tomatoes and zucchini. Yours are the hands that build society. This is my anthem to the volunteers, the storytellers, and the folks who know where the best creeks are. This is my anthem to folks who fill their time with the works of hand and mind.

You are worthy. I am worth. We are rich. We are generous. We are living the good life…with or without the permission granted by little pieces of green paper.

Where My Girls At? Searching For Coyote Woman

Coyote saunters across the myths, legends, and stories of the American west making mischief wherever he goes. In Din`e bahane`: The Navajo Creation Story, Paul G. Zolbrod explains that, "One of the most controversial characters among the Navajo is Coyote, prince of chaos, who is also the most notable catalyst. Transformer, troublemaker, trickster, deity Coyote is all of these, and more. He stole the stars laid out by First Man and scattered them, willy nilly, across the heavens. Yet, from Coyote's unruly behavior, changes came about that made life better. From Coyote's foolishness, mortals gained wisdom, learned what, and what not, to do. Coyote, as the forerunner of change, created ways of doing things so that customs new moral codes, ceremonies, designs for living came into being." Coyote shakes up the status quo to either make change or reaffirm the importance of tradition.

You can browse online and find pages of stories about how Coyote tampered with the stars, fell in love with a star, helped a young boy become a warrior, or established boundaries between life and death. However, you'll quickly notice that these are Old Man Coyote stories or stories about a sexually rambunctious Coyote whose dick is so long it frightens women away. Coyote loves women. He chases women. In some stories he helps them and in others tricks them into having sex.

One Blackfoot legend describes how Coyote created women from leftover buffalo bones.  The story ends with the declaration that, "And even to this day, if you have one group of men, and another of women, the men will want to sit by the fire and smoke. But the women talk. And whether it is because they were made out of the left-over bones that clicked and rattled, or whether it is because A-pe'si, the Coyote --who is a noisy creature himself--had a part in their making, no one can say." All women carry a bit of Coyote magic in their blood.

"Coyote Woman Dreaming" by Susan Seddon-Boulet

However, Franchot Ballinger  observes that stories about Coyote (and Trickster figures as a whole) almost invariably cast the protagonist as male. As a sexual creature, an object of satire, and a transgressor of social structures, Coyote occupied a traditionally male space. Even today, our social imagination typically casts men as the rovers, the wise fools, and shamans.

Coyote-Woman steps into this vacuum carrying a slightly different kind of medicine in the pockets of her crochet coat. Like Old Man Coyote, she is an Outsider. She saunters back and forth between wilderness and civilization learning the lessons that both worlds have to offer. She plays the fool, capering, clowning, and joking with the best. She is often called a fool because she rages against boundaries and breaks the rules that "only a fool would break". However, in reality, her foolishness is clever, wild, and irreverent.  As Ina Woolcott explains, "Coyote's medicine includes understanding that all things are sacred and that yet nothing is sacred."

This is Coyote-Woman's brilliant power. She sees the world as sacred, but not untouchable. She builds no churches and believes that old, mysterious, and holy objects belong to the world, not on high shelves and museum cases. She honors tradition and history as a living thread that is continually rewoven into new forms.

In fact, she is a new form herself. Coyote-Woman reclaims that traditionally male mythological space as she teaches women to reinvent themselves, test their limitations, discern worthwhile risks from danger, and sing ideas into being.

If First Mother gave women corn and men tobacco, it was Coyote Woman who evened out the deal later.