Creating a slideshow for a table presentation, I was amused at how iPhoto combined my images.
A journey from one dimension of expression to another... drawing on paper to editing digitally to dancing to praying to celebrating... light to shadow to form to weightlessness to truth to reflection to love. Hi friends, Yanika here. Sorry to be kind of a downer with this quote, but I saw it on facebook today and couldn't help sharing, what with all the bullshit in the air around these awkwardly staged "conventions" happening in our country right now. As inspiring as certain speeches can be, they're just fanning our short-lived, wool-over-the-eyes, all-of-a-sudden-we-care flames, which could go out as quickly as the "yes we can" excitement. No, we can't, not as long as we continue to repeat the same cycles. Why give in to more illusion and promises while war continues? Why are we so comfortable living with such hypocrisy? And if we're not comfortable, what are we doing to create more ease and flow?
Or are we just burning away, spiraling either up or down... while no one can hear the fizz and crackle of our transformation, whether evolutionary or destructive, because there's just so much distraction from truth. Truth is, it's time to truly care, and truly change. Not just continue to play the facade and use the same vocabulary, the same recycled dreams, the same shallow systems of profit and gain, the wealth of the few riding the calloused backs of the many - as long as we're comfortable. As long as we can drink away the weekend and zombie away the work-week. And no, I didn't just return from Burning Man, with a psychedelically-inspired fire under my butt to wreak my own version of hypocritical didacticism... maybe I'm just typing all this out to channel the fire in my heart, which aches, for my Mother Earth, and the destruction we continue to unload on her (that is, on ourselves, as we are part of her. We comprise her, and she us). I can only give my love. I can only give my frequency. That's not so little, when it is amplified by our collective spirit... we all want to survive, thrive, live in peace, exercise our compassion and creativity... At some point in our lives, we've all been advised to not carry "the weight of the world on our shoulders." I must work for MY happiness, even while children die daily in Syria, or as I walk by the man sleeping on the sidewalk on my way to yoga class, right here in the great land of AMERICA to which my family migrated in search of freedom. But wait. Really? Why is this ok? I DO carry the weight... sorry, but I DO. I don't "mean" to. I "try" not to. But how can we live in denial? I remember to breathe, and let it go. I dissolve into Oneness and try to allow balance. My life, my family, friends, art, health, consciousness, etc - is absolute bliss, heaven on earth I'd even call it. And that is my contribution. My joy. It is a luxury to live in joy. It should be a birthright. And then what? I don't want to "start a non-profit," join an "organization," engage in "lobbying," or create wow-look-at-me-ART which will "change" your mind. I don't want to soap-box more paragraphs like this one in cyberspace where a handful of people will nonchalantly read it (out of boredom or morbid curiosity) and move right along to the next thing. I can't "change your mind," I'm trying to liberate, build, and enhance my own, so that maybe it can fathom something which we haven't quiet stumbled onto yet? What is the "new model?" When and how will we "think" of it? It takes a quantum leap. Solutions can be right in front of us, but we're turned away, focusing on loose threads sewn by tangled sources... “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Richard Buckminster Fuller It's nearing, I can feel it. Will be in the desert to watch. To feel. To heal. Pour my fears and worries into a pitcher to empty. Plant the seeds of my intentions into the fertile soil of my heart, activated by the celestial realms, suddenly so much closer to us, and we to them.
Endless gratitude. Awareness of the elegance of being. The sumptuous sweetness of every breath. Life. Love. Within my self, a thousandfold emotive lions. Around my being, a million manifold eclipses, smiles and heartbeats. Light. Dangerously bright. Shadows, delirious and delicious. Strange romantic cravings. Fantastical stories and dreams. Something is in the wind, in the breeze. A silent wisdom speaks, hums slowly louder, unfolds us. Peacefulness is so near, at times reached. Ever there. Ever here.
Somethings pulls tenderly. A familiar symmetry. Bubble-thought and weightless heart, suddenly I'm everything. ** What does it take, creating me? Do it, friend. I'm eager to be born. Whispering linens, spores of sweat and tendrils of your hair, streaming all about you in your sleep. I watch the night you keep. A shadow self, my lonesome wanderer - my effortless loving of you, how I'd hold you if I could. Destiny and legacy, words I use not easily. I think of you, something neutral and unassuming in your being. There's a tall wall, and a lock and a seal, and I still think of you, past the clouds, past the line dividing your heart from mine, it feels still near, I'm reckless, useless, clumsy, with you far. Won't the daylight bring you again? A mystery, folded into harmony, holding my hand, it's transparent at a glance. Leaves, their skeletal lines, the air on the branches of the trees, all the ease with which I remember you. Still see your essence where you sat, not two hours ago. Not yet removed from my iris blot, from my map and chart of your sweet face, your laugh and your grace. Oh Easter Sunday and all your misguided attention, rather, the attention paid to you... so focused on male energy. So dominated by religion's tongue-in-cheek unacknowledged recklessness throughout history, how shameful and naive, all the beings lost in its name. Today I honor the sacred feminine energy. Rebirth, renewal, transformation, growth, the planting of seeds and the laying of eggs and all good and beautiful things. Righteous in my view, more so than any material or monetary thing or status. I long for our world's healing. I feel akimbo. There's a churning in my gut and in my heart. There's a solid line of force and love, from heart to throat to third eye and to crown and up to sun, and down again through and into the solar plexus, the hips, the base, the root, the crystal core of the planet, the everything of every star and every breath, all connected to the meditation I did on the beach yesterday, swaying like a reed in the wind, feeling the breathing of the Earth. Feeling the rapture and the poignant sadness, feeling the ache for absolution, the destiny of the unwritten, the points in space that time glosses over, the energy of song and movement, the knowingness of faith, the only bliss. Tonight I'm doing a gateway of light meditation and watching Thrive. Goodnight. 'The present moment is a powerful goddess.' -Goethe "We dance round in a ring and suppose ... but the secret sits in the middle and knows." Robert Frost See more of amazing sculptor and artist Dan Jones' work here Still haven't purchased a domain name for this site. "Nika of the Black Sea" is seeming a little long and tired to me these days. Contemplating changing it to just "Nika of the Sea."
Researching the history of the Black Sea, I found this on wikipedia: Strabo's Geography reports that in antiquity, the Black Sea was often just called "the Sea" (ho pontos). For the most part, Graeco-Roman tradition refers to the Black Sea as the 'Hospitable sea', Euxeinos Pontos (Εὔξεινος Πόντος). This is a euphemism replacing an earlier 'Inhospitable Sea', Pontos Axeinos, first attested in Pindar (early fifth century BCE,~475 BC). Strabo thinks that the Black Sea was called "inhospitable" before Greek colonization because it was difficult to navigate, and because its shores were inhabited by savage tribes. The name was changed to "hospitable" after the Milesians had colonized the southern shoreline, the Pontus, making it part of Greek civilization. Cheeky. As if there are no other seas on the planet, let's just refer to my sea as "The Sea." I am a mermaid soul. Woken from the waters of old. I roam alone and yet with all. My sea-home sings to me, a depth unknown. Or something along those lines! Also, am named after Nike of Samothrace, Greek goddess of victory, whose infamous ancient sculpture (now housed at the Louvre) was built in honor of a maritime win. Her silhouette has graced historic sail ships as a figurehead for protection, guidance, victory in sea battle. Though I am a pacifist and don't condone any sort of battle over anything, the idea of her ancient symbolism always appeals to me. Particularly the idea of her being a guide, extending her vision ahead of the ship, scanning the horizon for what's to come, brave and strong. So. Nika of the Sea? A little less specific, a little less "using the word black in the title," which my Mother thinks is too foreboding. Her opinion is important to me. I've been married to the "Black Sea" idea for too long... it is the place I come from after all. But with this new title, it's like saying I'm of the whole world, rather than of California, or of Odessa. Sure. We are {mostly} all of this world. I think. Oh. And I love the wiki mention of "savage tribes." I was so there. |
"Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us, can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it's really all about." Elsewhere:Instagram
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