crown of violets

Kiki in the sun

Fridays are a special day of the week for anyone who feels affinity with Venus and her many incarnations. As my celebration of the day, Fridays are the day of the week that I pay special attention to her grace in my life and let her know I’m grateful.

Mornings always start out with a cup of tea and a delicious fruit smoothie, currently being made from fresh strawberries and honey. After my breakfast, I feed the cats, inspect the turtle pond, and visit with the dove.

Kiki is a ring neck hyena turtle dove. The roommate hasn’t found a mate for him yet, so he’s the only bird we have and the only animal without a kin. The doves she’s brought have been turtle doves, who don’t have rings and he didn’t take to them at all. We think he may take after his father and prefers a female with a ring around her neck. Until we find one, I guess he’ll have to do with us as company. Often, doves without a mate will claim their human companions and Kiki’s been known to get his feathers a little ruffled when the roommate has a special friend over.

I make sure he has food and water and open the cage, hoping to coax him out to explore the living room a bit. Sometimes he’ll sit on my lap and explore the turtle pond, face off with Pandora the cat, or sit gently cooing as I stroke his feathers. He makes a strange laughing sound when he sees me in the morning and bows. I repeat the motion with my hand, trying to imitate his song. He pushes his head up under my fingers and I’m charmed as always by how gentle he is. He coos and preens my fingers like feathers, his own soft grey feathers trembling. I gather from his cage any loose feathers, putting them away safely, and blow him kisses as I go to start my day.

Fridays are days for leisure and pleasure, and there are few things that I take as much pleasure in as reading. I often find myself in the library, wandering down the aisles looking for a new book to read. It’s a game of sorts, seeing what titles stand out to me as I stroll aimlessly through the bookcases. Yesterday, I found a book that gave personal associations and symbols based on your day of birth. My birthday, July 21, was the day of daring. I laughed out loud at the description of an individual who enjoys a dynamic life, takes chances, and has a gift of being understanding and compassionate. A copy of “The Princess Bride” also jumped out at me from the shelves. I’ve loved the movie for years and never found the time to read the book before. Armed with my treat for the weekend, I made a trip across town to my lunch destination and spent the early part of the afternoon dancing. I knew I was having a great day when my current favourite song was playing the moment I turned on the radio to my preferred station and repeated when I turned to my second favourite.

After some good, centering exercise and lunch I made my way to a potential venue for the Dr. Sketchy’s branch I’m trying to start in Winnipeg. I was given the tip by a friend who is pretty much my favourite person in the world right now. The location and space was perfect, a theater over top of a store that features vintage clothing, costume rentals, local designers, imports and rare books. The owner was very interested, has been a performer and artist’s model, and we picked two potential dates. There was a girl working there who gave me a great tip about where to get extra art supplies. While I was there, she started talking about the potential ghosts in her new apartment and, of course, the lights went out! We got into a discussion about the resident spirits. The theater and library has been known to have otherwordly visitors and I wonder if it’s too much to hope that they might make an appearance while class is in session… ♥ I’m both fascinated by and nervous around ghosts. I think I like the touch of mystery and the shiver of fear they send down my spine. When I was child, I had a strange habit of waking up every night at the same time, called from deep dreams to a room that was heavy and buzzing with invisible presence. It was as if the air had become electric with energy. It was overwhelming and it took years for me to be able to sit with that feeling without pulling away. I later learned while studying folklore that the time frame I was waking up in is known as the witching hour, the point during the night when the veil is thinnest. Since then, I’ve always wondered what would happen if I actively sought out to learn about them and those strange feelings I get. Would I be lucky enough to see one…? Would I stand bravely or be shook to my core? Maybe one day we’ll know for sure. ♥

Mondragon

Delighted with the results of my visit, I made my way to Mondragon to stalk my friend S and spent the late afternoon to evening in a wingback chair, enjoying a great book and great conversations with friends. Mondragon is quickly becoming my favourite place to loiter. They have delicious vegan food, a wonderfully warm and welcoming staff, and great events. I gave S a charm I’d been carrying for her for a while and made plans to go to a reading circle/discussion group centered around the Mayan Calendar. I left feeling energized, excited, and incredibly grateful for the wonderful people in my life.

As I walked home, I made a point to look up at the stars and thank Venus for a simple and beautiful day. *blows a kiss*

{inspired by gala darling}

Magical Sunset
Originally uploaded by San*
“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
- Edgar Allan Poe

As a child, I’d never consider myself beautiful. I thought I was too odd to be anything lovely. Now at twenty-two, I’ve come to accept all the ways that I am unique as expressions of my inherent beauty and sacred self. Beauty is so much more than a shape, a size, a colour, or an image. We find beauty in those things, but beauty itself goes beyond that. What we understand as beautiful is what we find pleasing, whether it be physical, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual. We nourish all the ways we are unique and beautiful by accepting that we are expressions of the love that surrounds us and accepting ourselves as sacred.

Accepting the self as sacred is a choice to acknowledge that all you do and all that you are is beautiful and loved. We are the physical manifestation of a divine dream and we are meant to celebrate this, through our actions and our words. The world wants us to live beautifully, with soulful pleasure at what we are creating.

We carry with us an inner guide that directs us and helps us follow our path. Something special that is born when we enter into a physical form, something that wouldn’t have existed without this union of body and spirit. You can call it the soul, the essence, the imagination, it doesn’t matter. I’m fond of the term “inscape”. For spiritual discussions, I tend to refer to it as our “dreaming”. It is unique and the soul of what we are, the child of our physical and spiritual selves coming together for this moment in time.

The inscape is the distinctive and inherent quality of something. It is dynamic and ever changing, like our personalities. It’s what we carry with us, what we create from. Inscapes can be similar, but no two can ever be exactly alike. Our inscape holds the keys to unraveling the mysteries of our gifts and can help guide us in our journey through life. Our purpose is to flourish and it tells us what we want and need. Like dreams, it communicates with the waking mind through symbols and affinity. Affinity is the feeling of being connected to something and our affinity for certain symbols are sign posts drawing our attention to objects and moments. Anyone who
follows a spiritual path or has ever been attracted to another person understands this feeling instinctively. How we listen to these feelings decide the path our lives will take. The world gives us what we bring to it. If we follow our path with delight, our path will bring us delight.

We can begin to unravel our inscapes through paying attention to the symbols that call to us. Symbols are often used by our subconscious to get messages to us, like while we’re dreaming. By actively working with these symbols and affinities, we gain skill in decoding the messages around us and which ones we want to respond to. Explore your start chart, birth signs, or personal associations. What do you feel drawn to? What does it represent symbolically? Believe nothing, entertain every possibility. Read favourite stories for inspiration and watch your emotional self for responses to different characters, objects, or settings. Use those feelings as a guide.

The other side of living beautifully, with deep soulful pleasure, is by actively expressing and celebrating the mysteries you uncover while delving into yourself. Celebrating the inscape manifests for me as a spiritual and artistic process. I take the things that attract me in my daily life, research them, deconstruct them, explore different sides, then put it all back together in a way that I find pleasing. Express yourself through what you fill our days with. Any aspect of your life is an opportunity to celebrate your unique spark. Rework your wardrobe to include only the colours, styles, and pieces that make you feel incredible. Make your personal space a sacred space, filled with things that inspire and delight you. Celebrate your body by indulging your senses. Surround yourself with food, music, activities, and company that nourish your soul and inspire you to be your best and brightest.

Let your inner voice be the final word on the beautiful life you’re building for yourself. Your life is meant to nourish and express the essence of who you are and what you contribute as a co-creator of the world. embrace it, love it, let it shine. Define for yourself what is beautiful to you. Be courageous and loving with yourself, humbled by and generous with your gifts. Love yourself fiercely and dedicate yourself to your beautiful life.

Thank you, stars
Originally uploaded by ::Miguel Vila::

When we say something is beautiful, what we’re really saying is that we find it pleasing. We feel distaste for things that don’t please us, that we have no affinity with. We pull towards us what we feel a connection to. This deep attraction feels good, it pleases us, so we are attracted to beautiful things. We desire.

While many of us share common ideas of beauty, we also are wildly different in what we feel desire for. We are even wildly different from one moment to the next within ourselves. We are creatures in flux, change, motion. Our perception of beauty is tied to something deep in us. We are creatures of both sensuality and spirituality, we love harmony as much as we love chaos, so we are drawn to things that are both like us and different. We seek both ourselves and strangeness in what we are drawn to.

The moment of attraction is like a sparkling warmth that fills me from the inside out, sweet and sharp electricity across my skin. It can come with a person, a really good piece of art work, a delicious meal, a new idea that’s just what I’ve been waiting for. It can be a cold shiver down my spine, with just enough bite, dazzling and breathtaking. Desire is elemental, essential to our being. It’s what drives me to create, to explore, to dance. It’s the drive to express, to give of myself, to take into myself. Without desire, we’d probably fade into entropy, slowing down until we stagnate or fade. We’re like the stars, needing just the right mix to keep sparking, keeping igniting, renewing ourselves, burning brightly until it’s time for us to go out. Until then what we truly desire is to burn ourselves perfectly with everything we’ve got. We want to give our gifts away, to hold nothing back. We want to shine.

Magic Moldy Cabbage

{Food is meant to be shared and I hope that if you find this post useful you will pass it on to anyone who could use it.}

I haven’t had to go grocery shopping in seven months. My roommate and I occasionally pick up treats, but our cupboards and freezers have been full all autumn and winter. When they begin to deplete, we also know how to fill them back up again, without going to the grocery store. I’ve spent less than five hundred dollars at the grocery store since August.

What has made the most difference has been learning traditional methods of gardening. Traditional gardening yields more produce per area than conventional gardening, as well as many plants giving multiple harvests in one season. The difference can literally mean having one squash per plant for the season versus having twenty. There’s no real right or wrong way, no dogma. The strength of traditional gardening is how people approach their relationship with the earth. Through learning the cycles of the earth and plants, you learn what part of the plant to use, how to harvest at the height of health, how often to harvest, and what plants help each other flourish.

Scatter seeds instead of planting in rows. Use weeds (plants you don’t want in your garden) as mulch by tossing them back on the ground from where you pulled them up. I like to separate the root of particularly invasive plants and toss the root out of harms way. Plant a variety of companion plants in the same space. Peppers and tomatoes grow well together because they’ve been doing it for many, many years in South America. Squash, beans, and sun root all help each other grow. Chamomile is a great companion plant for tea plants, herbs, and many types of vegetables.

Gardening using plants native to the area where you’re planting makes things much easier. Look around and see what naturally grows in nature around you. Since I was a child, I’d considered dandelions a weed. Lovely golden colour, but more a nuisance than anything. The dandelion flourishes here and many lawn owners curse the day the tooth of the lion decided to settle in our fair soil. This summer I learned quite a lesson when I was taught the many uses of dandelions. Every part of the dandelion is edible. At a wild foods workshop, a lady had even brought a dandelion cake with a light mint frosting that was absolutely delicious! She had substituted ground dandelion root for cocoa in a chocolate cake recipe. The root can also be used to make a drink similar to coffee, which I have never tried. Dandelion roots should be harvested from plants that are three to four years old. Dandelion leaves make a great bitter tea to drink before your meal to stimulate digestion. Our wild foods workshop presenter mentioned he loved the tender young leaves for a salad. A bitter green salad is also great before a meal to stimulate digestion. Dandelion jellies and wine are also popular.

I like to grow native plants outdoors, letting them follow their natural cycles, while growing other varieties indoors where they get more of a Mediterranean climate. Whenever I’m looking for something new to grow, I also look into the availability of heritage seeds, mostly because these seeds don’t have the genetic splicing that has been done to many other commercial seeds. Somehow fish genes in my tomatoes doesn’t sit too well with me. I’m not too worried about this either though, as within a few generations a plant will normally revert to its original state, regardless of anything we’ve spliced them with so far.

Perhaps the most basic skill I’ve learned in the past year about gathering food is to observe my environment. I live in an urban environment but I still know where berry bushes are, where to get acorns, tiger lily bulbs, and sun roots, all of which are edible. I know where to find teas outside my own garden for stimulating digestion, for soothing digestion, to help you sleep, to getting rid of icky stomach bugs, to promote menstrual health. All this involved was taking the time to walk my neighbourhood and learn what plants were growing. With time and study, I’ll learn to harvest from plants from many different environments. I also know how to tell which plants are healthy to harvest, which are suffering from soil deficiencies, and which need more time.

Use this skill for observation in the community around you as well.
The next biggest resource for us this year for food has been neighbourhood programs. I volunteered weekly this summer with our community’s food security organization. The goal of the program is to make nutritious and affordable food available to residents. It does this by working with members to offer community cafes, potlucks, and fresh food boxes in the winter months. My favourite part of the program were the trips to a local farm and the community market where they sold the organic vegetables gathered from the farm.

I’ve also traded for teas, herbs, eggs and other resources that our neighbours had that I didn’t. A lady from Burma asked my roommate for squash flowers and leaves from her plants for a soup. Not only did she gift food in return, she offered to share the soup when it was made. Another friend of my roommate’s who works at a community center called her a couple of months ago. The center is a pick-up point for the food bank and on a regular basis, half of the people who had signed up wouldn’t show up. The ones that did wouldn’t touch the boxes full of farm fresh vegetables because they had dirt on them. They had become so disconnected from where their food was coming from that they saw the dirt as unclean. As a result literally crates of food were being thrown out about three times a week. My roommate started making regular trips to see if there are leftovers and when there is, we distribute it to our apartment building, our friends, and other individuals who distribute their own communities. As a result, she’s building a network that is getting food to people who need it. I’ve watched her do this and begun doing it in my own circle.

All the resources we need are there if we look for them. Learn how to cultivate and share the abundance we’re surrounded with. Start up some seedlings in a container. Make it an easy, delicious salad mix that won’t take long to sprout. Connect and network with your friends and family. We already have more than enough, we just need some practice getting it around.

The Magician

When I first decided to become a companion, I was staying with my friend Rae-annon. It was the middle of winter, just over a year ago. It seemed to come out of the blue but I felt such a moment of clarity. I’ve always been interested in studying women of arts and pleasure, muse, geisha, oiran, hierodule, and a thousand names more… women dedicated to enchantment and beauty. I found their names throughout history as they roamed with humanity across the globe. Each one expressed their gifts through different ways but they were all linked through an invisible golden thread in my mind. I found inspiring examples both in history and in fiction and one day stumbled across a blog that opened me to the world of escorts and courtesans in the modern internet age. Livvy’s blog led me to Gillette and I finally started respecting the pull I was feeling. Using information from them, I started building the vision of what I wanted to create. I eventually started my own wordpress blog called “Chère Juliette” for what I thought would be my working name. I thoroughly enjoyed writing there, sharing my aesthetic and what I was building for myself. I shared my love for vintage erotica and interacted with some very inspiring people.

At the time, my life was very fragmented and Juliette became no exception. I had pieces of but no one part of me seemed to support the other. I understand this fragmentation now as a consequence of being untruthful with myself. I knew what I was and what I was called to do, but I wasn’t strong to face the inner discord that made it impossible to build a firm foundation. It was also an incarnation of my receptivity, a shadow tendency to back down unless truly threatened. I moved forward at a slow pace with a sound intellectual position but without the emotional weight to back it up. I hadn’t truly invited this aspect of myself to flourish and I hadn’t learned to hold my ground and lay the rules, with myself or others. My results were understandably chaotic. Frustrated that I wasn’t getting what I wanted, I deleted the blog and took a hospitality job.

It wasn’t too long before I ended up leaving the restaurant. It was a restrictive environment with many employees feeling fearful to talk freely about themselves and especially their sexuality. After a series of disagreements with the manager, the moment to leave came after disagreement over tarot cards. I had given one of the girls I worked with a reading after our shift while we were enjoying our free meal of the day, in the restaurant. Weeks later, we were called into the back to explain. I was told that if I ever brought them back I would be without a job. Understanding a need to respect the public space, I told her I wouldn’t bring them into the restaurant again. She started asking me if I understood the nature of the cards. Confused, I responded with the history I had learned and was immediately cut off. It quickly became apparent that she viewed the cards as inherently negative and dangerous. She started telling me stories of her cousin who had been possessed by evil spirits after playing with them. I told her that the cards were important tools to me and I didn’t care to discuss it further. She withdrew, sent me away, and cornered the other girl in my absence. It was near the end of my shift and feeling very angry, I clocked out and went to get changed. A few minutes later, the other girl who had been involved came into the locker room and said that the manager had started asking her religious questions about her faith. She had wanted the girl to talk to me about what I was doing. I quit, citing an unsuitable environment as the cause. I had loosened the first strings of fear by speaking up and defending something I felt strongly about, without losing my temper or acting disrespectfully.

I spent the summer gardening, developing a connection to the earth and learning how to contribute. I became very involved with community work and continued to look for a fulfilling career. I found another piece of my passion for nourishing through the garden and food security groups. I learned how the earth feeds us and how we can feed each other. This work led me to taking a temporary administration position at a social services agency. I learned many things in this position about how we respond when we aren’t nourished and the responsibility we all have towards caring for each other. Unfortunately, I again found myself at odds with the environment and instead of taking a permanent position, I left. I didn’t have to think about what I wanted to do. I already knew.

In the end, it felt right that I took a wander off into the forest before circling back to this marker on my path. Mysteries are happen when we become receptive to the divine. My experiences over the past year have given me skills I would have never thought to seek out, but which are definitely serving me well. I wonder what I would be creating and where we would be if I hadn’t turned away. More so, now that we’re here again I wonder where we’ll go next.

Fire Dance
Originally uploaded by The Eternity

I enjoy beauty for beauty’s sake and seek it out in the world around me. That includes cultivating the grace already inherent in me, refining my talents and skills so that I can become a clearer channel for what calls to me. We are all diamonds in the rough. By both giving to and receiving from, we co-create with the world and become the ambassadors of what we want to see in it. We learn, we teach. What we desire also desires us. The more we let those energies flow through us, the more we embody our dreams.

This year, I’ve been taking the opportunity to explore things I’ve never really made the time for. Dancing has been a passion of mine for years, though I’ve never made it a consistent part of my life. I’ve danced to give expression to sorrow, anger, joy, and I dance for celebration. To start, I’ve taken to dancing at least one a day, preferably in the morning. I pick any kind of music that catches my fancy and let go whirling, stomping, swaying, whatever I feel like. This puts me in an incredible mood with which to face the day. I love my morning practices on my own and I feel that dancing for my personal enjoyment brings out the soulfulness of it, letting me express my emotions better and better. But I’d like to devote time to improving my skill and I’m excited to start balancing that with studying with instructors who will really challenge me.

My personal style of dancing is very much like Middle Eastern dance and I’d love to take a belly dancing class. Middle Eastern style dancing is a very sensual form of dancing and the style of music and richness of the performances I’ve seen are quite alluring. Belly dancing helps you get in touch with your sensual self and provides lots of creative opportunity for putting personal pieces together. Studying will definitely improve my personal technique, as well as introduce me to new movements and music. Community centers often have classes several months long throughout the year but I’ve found a couple of teachers in the city through the internet who hold classes in their own space, so hopefully I won’t have to wait until the next cycle begins at the centers.

Ballet looks light and airy but demands a lot from dancers physically. It’s much more formalized and I like the challenge of it, especially beginning as an adult. Royal Dance at the Forks will be holding fall classes in beginner ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet also offers adult classes. Both are central locations and are good schools. I’ve always been a little weak on the constitution side and ballet will definitely challenge me to build strength and endurance in a completely different way than belly dancing.

Because I try to find balance in everything I do (and because I’ve been threatening forever ♥), I’m also going to finally sign up for a yoga class. My friend Rae-annon has repeatedly shown me the wonders of yoga even walking me through some workouts in the morning while I was staying with her. Besides being a wonderfully centering workout, yoga will help me improve my flexibility and energize me during the influx of demanding physical activity. It also has spiritual ties to many disciplines that speak to me. Like all the best pursuits, it inherently supports the whole vision and the type of energy I’m attracting into my life.