Belated Birthday Message

Happy belated birthday, brother J.C. Here's the portrait I promised you, I know after 2000 years everyone could use a change. I call it, "Jesus Gets a Flat Top, after 2000 years he got tired of that long hair."
Thank you for bringing us your wisdom, your guidance and your light.

and I Feel Fine

"Where have I been?"
Hmmn pussycat, if I hear that one more time I'm gonna stop answering, that's what I'll do. I've returned to the snake bitten small town where I used to run Mane Street hair salon and barber; I ran it for 7 years. I needed a break, I sold the building and moved on to loftier pursuits. It was a mental hiatus;it lasted for four years. I had alot of mistakes to live down, I had to find the space to fall in love with Tate. I had to recover from the abuse I caused myself. I had to journey to the inter worlds and work with all of those amazing and beautiful children at the sensory institute.
"I missed you," that's what I say.
I missed the conversations, the drama, the laughter. I feared it, the return, it's true. The truth is there is something humbling about the return to the Brier patch as if I couldn't survive without it. There is a sense of service too. It's humbling like a Guru washing dishes for the Salvation Army dinners, or Morgan Freeman as God sweeping floors, the janitor in "Bruce Almighty". No, not for a second am I claiming some type of grandiose ego perception, as if I was anyone other than myself, it's just kind of nice to have a balance between working in the realm of the subconscious and spiritual with a more concrete and predictable or dare I say it, "normal" occupation.
The entire drama reminds me of the old Jewish folktale about the man who lived in a tiny little house with his six children, his in-laws, his parents and his four grandchildren. He went to the Rabbi complaining of the crowdedness and the noise and the mess and how his family was driving him nutz. To make an entertaining story short, the Rabbi suggests the man take the chickens, the sheep, the goats , the dogs, the cats, the ducks and the donkey into the house too on consecutive visits. Then, the man is truly about to snap, he goes back to the Rabbi in his near insane condition. The Rabbi then tells him to go home and kick all of the animals out of the house. He did. The house felt much better. He never complained again.
I smile at the thought of how many people whom I really love and missed "visiting" with as I did their hair have been in to see me in the past two weeks. On the down time(and there is quite a bit of that now)I sit in my beautiful turquoise antique styling chair. I take in the town through the window on main street. I take in the colors of the newly renovated building; its' walnut stained open beamed ceilings, the track lights which gracefully curve overhead. I am happy with my re-incarnation, my new shop, "Run-In with Sheer's". I would pay money just to sit in this pretty place, I teasingly say to myself.
It's the end of the year as we know it, and I feel fine.

Inevitable

It was bound to happen, that's what she said. I called my friend Georgeanne, she's an artist too. We have alot in common, we have alot of differences. The main difference between us is the fact that I have a fantastic relationship with my man and she is forever bored and frustrated, maybe even disappointed by her choice of mate. I am pacing across the kitchen floor, I can't stop fuming over the events of last night.
Tate brought a woman home, she was drop dead sexy. She has emerald green eyes and the body of an 18 year old female kickboxer. She's a vixen, a word I rarely use but it fit. Shoulder length blonde hair, sexy.
"She's coming to live with us" he said. "She's been with me all along, now get used to it."
"What?!!!!"
"I need two, that's just the way it is."
I begin to reel in my head like a great whale on the end of a harpoon. I am carrying laundry baskets across the floor of our city apartment. Okay I can do this,I think to myself;anything to make him happy.
"Wait, what about when you had your heart attack?"
"She was with me, it happened at her house."
"You said you were in a hotel."
"Yeah, I guess I did."
"That's it!" I stormed out into the crowded street below, I threw a tantrum, an all out fit. I ranted and shouted; a large crowd gathered. "I am not having this, I am absolutely not sharing you with her, I'm out of here!" I smashed a beer bottle into the sidewalk; it exploded like a hand grenade. I got his attention.
"Okay, I get it. I love you and only you, I understand." Tate said words of reconciliation. He chose me.
I was unappeased. I was panicked and still furious.
I opened my eyes.
I was covered in a cold sweat.
There he slept, warm and strong, his breath mingling with my cheek. I kissed his forehead.
"Hmmn?" he murmured.
"She was with you when you had the heart attack. She's me isn't she?"
"Yes baby."
He said yes.
AND THEN, THE NEXT DAY
It's six o clock in the evening. I arrive home after work, Tate is cooking something fantastic as usual.
"The girls are bringing their paintings over." he told me.
A few weeks ago Tate sent me to the beach for the weekend to bond with the wild women, it's an annual event. It was the first time I had been invited. While the cats away. . .No, it couldn't be that bad, but in a sense yes. He went to an art opening of two novice painters. They are granola girls, they are organic gardeners. He spent ALOT of money. It wasn't a good time to be spending that kind of money. Maybe it never is considering... what he bought! (I am NOT kidding)
They wanted to see where their masterpieces would hang, they wanted to deliver their paintings to the house, our house.
Liza, shoulder length blonde hair. The most beautiful emerald green eyes, young(24?), compact perfect body and a maudlin pout anchoring high cheekbones, self portrait in watercolor. He loves it, it is very pretty. I enjoy the painting really, it's the other 3 pieces he bought that made me furious.
He spent over one hundred dollars on a 2"x2" watercolor in a cheap frame of two ugly flowers. More than that on a sketch of a barn that looked like something an unartistic 4th grader might doodle, and Oh forgive me, he bought one disasterly looking thing for me, for my CHRISTMAS present!(I am a bad person now aren't I?)
I excused myself after the initial viewing. Actually it was after I saw a twinkle in the eye of my Tate as he invited the vixen to step up onto the sofa to get a closer look at an etching he had previously bought. The entire motion was so similar to the day he came to my house, when it was only mine. The day I stepped onto a ladder to examine the failings of the heat duct and he stood up and touched my waist to make sure I did not fall. The day he told me after six years of friendship that he had been in love with me since the first time he ever saw me.
It was that look on his face.
I went to the basement to retrieve an enormous basket of laundry.
"Where do you work now?" he asked Ms. America.
"I am a painter only."
Grrrrrrr!!!!!!
Yeah, me too, see my art. It's a preformance piece, it's titled "Laundry."
It was bound to happen sooner or later Georgeanne said. He was bound to make you mad eventually. "Sum it up" she said, "what exactly did he do to make you so furious?"
He bought bad art. That's what I tell myself. He bought bad art.

Wisdom on the Roof

I have myself on the slate roof of "The House That Changes",H.T.C. for short. It is night time and the moon is visible and luminous. An owl, equal in size to me, swoops over my head to get my attention. He has it. Yes, it's male. A second swoop and he lands next to me; his torso is level with mine, we are over fifty feet in the air. I notice his size, his presence. I am not afraid. He has come to divulge some tidbit of infinite wisdom to me. He tells me something. It is important. He tells me without speaking. The meaning of his message is that I CAN do this. I grab ahold of an electrical cable which goes all the way to the ground.I begin to slide down the cable like Spiderman, my favorite. The knot at the top lets go. I am free falling. . . "I am going to die" I hear my thoughts pound through my head. Falling, falling, FAST!
I land, ungracefully on my feet.

Wisdom visits in the darkness of the subconscious, on the rooftop, or crown chakra of the body(HTC). A message was delivered; I agreed to the commitment to the task. I leap on my own. The stronghold fails. I fall. I face my death (of an emotion, ego, and once again I land on my feet. Ahhh... that was close!