Look What is Going to Paris (Graffiti Joy)

It is Valentine’s Day. I think it’s one of the most contrived and annoying holidays that exists. And it causes so much heartbreak for people because it sets up this expectation of the cult of the couple and then if you are single clearly you are undesirable and a total failure. So I am counterbalancing that here with all of our bad ass-ness in whatever ways those come through. And in that celebration of our unique super powers I want to share the love with the other creative people in my world. One of my dearest friends since we’ve been 15 years old in the grunge scene in Seattle has become my favorite collaborator for doing the wheat pasting graffiti. She and I had the time of our lives last Thanksgiving up in Niland on the Salton Sea pasting up some of the digital collages we have done. Last Saturday when I was driving back San Diego from a monumental time meeting new graffiti artist friends at Slab City and capturing a break dancer flipping in front of Salvation Mountain I called this beloved friend Angelala and told her about all of the adventures. During this conversation she suggested something that was so wonderful that I’m still tingling from it. She is blessed to be embarking on an adventure to Iceland and Paris this week and she suggested that she take some of the graffiti collages that I’ve created in sticker form and blow up Paris (visually). This is a dream come true and if I had the resources right now I’d be in Paris myself. So this goes back to love and commitment and connection and value because a lot of times that actually comes from our friends and our Family and the other people who inspire us and so let’s shake our groove thangs for all of the love that we have beyond the cult of the couple. And I cannot wait to see photos of the stickers in the city that I originally fell in love with graffiti in. And stay tuned for a new online class launching very soon teaching you how to do your own amazing and fun digital collages! Oh GOODY. 

Top TEN in 2010

2010 was incredible. I felt optimistic about this year like I had never experienced. I felt all of the work and dedication I had been putting into my life was truly grounding, and it was TRUE! I am so grateful for all the beautiful friendships, family connections and co-conspirators dancing this crazy TRUST WALK of a life with me. Blessings to all….and 2011 is already shaping up to be extraordinary.

I am finishing the book for My Oracle of Initiation deck, and am thrilled about the caliber of contributors I have offering their insights into the cards. I will be off to the West Coast to teach in March & April and then down to Central America for 5 months this spring/summer. Thank you for all the ways you each touched my life, making this a sparkly, juicy, DY-NO-MITE year. Here is my top ten list of the rock star brilliant things that occurred…

1. I published my first edition of my Oracle of Initiation Deck!!

Boy was this an experience. Almost four years into the project, I went into the zone and in 13 days time I designed, graphically set up and wrote the text for the  first edition of 88 decks. Thanks to MaryBeth for all her amazing help in this crazy, madcap caper of Oracular joy.

2. Joyful success during the West Coast Oracle tour

Spring 2010 I took the show on the road and taught with The Oracle of Initiation on the west coast. It was the business success I had been palpating for years, and it finally landed. I can feel things YEARS before they manifest, so it very cool when they materialize on the earth plane. I met amazing people, had a BLAST doing what I love and came home feeling empowered and proud of offering my sacred gifts. I want to thank everyone who showed up to my workshops and lectures in San Diego, especially Lisa, Trevahr, Jade and Xana for being my fabulous Guardians. I look forward to this springs tour, go to the event section at www.OracleofInitiation.com for the locations of the groovy gatherings with The Oracle in March and April.

I also want to thank one special client who has been a dream to work with. We met at Esalen during my tour and she has moved mountains within herself during our time together. It is such a gift to have a receiver for your work. I love yah IVP in Paris.

3. I won a year of free dance at EmbodyDance Santa Fe’s 10th anniversary party!

I magnetized my raffle tickets, energetically twinkled the little girl who was drawing the winner, and then put my hands out, palms up, to receive, and they called my name!!!! May abundance shower down upon you in the ways that feed and serve you best. They have for me. And much love to the beautiful dance community here in Santa Fe.

4. The Bachelorette & Amma & New Visions of Relationships

I am both a romantic and a cheese-ball. Its true, I enjoy  watching the Bachelor and Bachelorette. Part of it is psychological voyeurism, but the main attraction is the idea of true love. I know, I know, it rarely works out on that show, but I have always carried a torch for great romantic unions. Because of the struggles I see so many contemporary people having {me included} with finding suitable mates, I am refocusing my work towards why this is happening. I have been interviewing men about their perspectives on what has happened with relationship over the last decades.

Men are my main subject at this time because my work has previously been with women’s empowerment, and I am  wondering where the men are at. Thank you to all the lovely men who allowed me to peek inside their psyches and share their ideas on women, love and commitment. May we all evolve beyond the Madman version of gender roles and expectation. I am bringing Amma into this because my heart was blown open when I saw her for the first time this spring, and I believe energetic expansion may be the pathway to reclaiming the sacred within our intimate relationships. I will keep you posted on what I learn.

5. My Painted Body ritualistic photography work

This was a bang up year for my Painted Body ritualistic photography work. I had some fabulous shoots in Abiquiu and my first collaboration outside of New Mexico in Joshua Tree. It is such a primal joy to share my relationship with the land through initiating others into their unique brilliance. I shall miss the arid desert lands when I dance by the sea, but will always return to one of my true loves, magical, magical New Mexico.

6. Eating Coconut Ice Cream

For 10 years I did not get ice cream because of a lactose intolerance and the sugar. And then it came, the crazy-good coconut milk ice creams sweetened with agave. Lord have mercy. I have died and gone to heaven. HEAVEN. God and Goddess are good.

7. Yraceburu EarthWisdom-Family of my HEART

I have had a very good year with the family of my heart, Yraceburu EarthWisdom. In July I was initiated during The Otter Ways Women and Girls Rights of Passage weekend  in Las Vegas, NM. I was then a Guardian at  the incredible Grandmothers Summit Celebrating Turtle Island honoring our Elders and Wisdom Keepers this October . The Dream Circles have also been very juicy for the women to reclaim the ancient visioning ways. It is good to find your family. Very very good.

8. Tarot World FUN

Boy was this a fun year for Tarot community events. I got to go to The Readers Studio in NYC in April meeting delightful folks. The 2nd photo below is of Mary K. Geer, a prolific researcher and writer on Tarot and divination, Joanna Powell Colbert of the fabulous Gaian Tarot and Marilyn Shannon a crystal ball expert. We were all headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the secret back room to see ancient Tarot decks with Robert Place. Good stuff, thanks Sasha Graham-cool Tarot chick-for setting it all up. I also got to meet J. Jordan Hoggard of his magical Mystereum Tarot, being released any moment by Schiffer!!

The Oracle was also a cover girl, having 3 limited edition covers for Marcus Katz’s Tarosophist Tarot Professionals magazine.

And then…here in Santa Fe over Halloween weekend, we had LETS- Land of Enchantment Tarot Symposium!!!! So way way cooool. I was the opening speaker, and all the other presentation were top-notch. If you would like to see the story of how my Oracle deck was created, you may watch this 55 minute video with  images of where my ideas and influences come from.

http://vivu.tv/portal/archive.jsp?flow=397-654-7677&id=1291578442700

If you read this Blog in the future, I believe the video is only cataloged for 9 months {August 2011 it dies}. Thanks Carrie Paris, Margaret Letzkus and Robert Hahn for organizing such a worthwhile event…watch out for next year.

9. The photo album revealing My Destiny from my Mother

My mom hit it out of the ballpark this Christmas. When I opened my presents from her she had complied a photo album of my life from zero to twenty-five. The astounding thing about this was SHE FOUND NEW PHOTOS I HAD NEVER SEEN…and through this surprising new vision of my life, my DESTINY was mirrored back to me. I have to explain why new photos are so special. I am obviously a photography nut. Its part of what I do. But I have always had this energetic connection to images, I feel the depths in them, I draw on the energetic signatures and travel through them for memories and connections. They are alive to me. So at 42 to have my mother bust out some new representations of my story, my myth shocked me. I KNOW all of the family photos, so I thought. Re-visioning is so great, that’s what my Oracle deck is about, reclaiming the power and gifts in the challenges and misperceptions. And then I was able to see all the threads, all the tendrils to who I have become…SINCE I WAS AN INFANT. I am working on a video to share these connections, be patient, its a technology upgrade in me…i-movie…I am giving my mother BIG LOVE  {no-not the polygamy folks people!} for all her work feeding those negatives she has drug around for 40 years into her Wolverine machine to bust out one of the best physical gifts I may have ever gotten.

10 Azul my LOVE

I am an animal person. I had cats for 28 years straight, and then I moved to New Mexico. I need animal love, and Azul my roomie has been a light in my life. I thank her for all the joy, delight and holding of the space she offers. She is a Angel.

Rest in Peace Beautiful Julie Rivers, I honor your radiance and see you glowing in Chochiti canyon.

And Santo Nino, Eshu, Ellegua, Poppa Legba, Thank you for opening the doors and gateways to my destiny this year, and I appreciate all your support as a messenger and a scribe. And the abundance rocks. love yah….and Ogun, Shango, Oshun, Yemaya and beloved Obi, Obatala who has my head. Much respect.

Final words of wisdom…

Holy Ground

Holy Ground by Veronica Koperski

I shall seek no longer for the burning bush;

All bushes are ablaze.

And I will not hasten to depart from daily grief and gladness to climb a holy mountain;

Every Mountain now is sacred,

Each marketplace, and ever home, All, all are blessed

Since God has pitched a tent among us.

Now on our earth are to be found the footprints of the Word made flesh

Who walked with us in wind and rain and under sun and stars,

In joy and sorrow,

Born of Mary, watched over by Joseph,

Eating and drinking, living and loving.

Dying yet living, the Word is made flesh

And all the earth, and each of us is holy ground

Where we must slip our sandal off and walk softly, filled with wonder.

May we all see ourselves as holy ground, and slip our sandals off- filled with wonder. Blessed Be, Aho. love and light in this enchanted season,

Kwahu Abeja

Roger Ballen’s Startling and Unsettling Visions

Roger Ballen’s work is one of my great inspirations.  He has created a fascinating & shadowy universe through photographing the impoverished whites in their rural South African villages. Since the 1980’s American expatriate and former geologist Ballen turned his camera lens onto the insular world of these Shadow Land people. The images feel like walking into a 1920’s mental ward and becoming a part of their reality. The subjects look like they left this world long ago, or never actually landed, retreating into their own childlike reality.  His palette is a gritty range of grays and blacks punctuated by fascinating arrangements between the models and their surreal world. The rooms feel barren, but may contain naive graffiti scrawled across the cold cement walls, or puzzling still-lives within this irrational world of make-believe and artifice. His shadowy vignettes are the visual equivalent of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy-tale, where everything is not always pretty & bright, and strange things happens in veiled places.

This challenging work has mesmerized me because Ballen has captured some of the central hues of my childhood. My German grandparents were very old-school and clannish. They lived in town, but it felt like the old-country because they only had a wood stove until the late 1980’s. They would send me to school with warmed stones from the firebox wrapped in greasy rags-now tell me that’s not a fairy-tale!! Having survived two world wars, and the period of wild inflation in Germany when you could buy an apartment building for a ham, my Grandfather would save old nails, screws, and even craft new handles for broken hammers. Everything was patched, mended or reworked to extend its purpose.

We had the front of the house, which was brighter and more welcoming, and then the back of the home was more mysterious. It contained many secret thresholds. It was chilly and stagnant in those cloistered rooms, with enough blankets on each bed to smother a small child. I remember feeling both constricted and held in those weighty sleep chambers. Because of my Grandparent’s upbringing I can smell Ballen’s environments; the musty odors of old work clothes and hoarding; the boiled meat & potatoes these kinfolk eat.

A fabulous post on Ballen’s Portland, Oregon show

http://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2008/04/roger_ballen_at_quality_pictur.html

considers the critics who say he is an “artistic mercenary, exploiting his poverty-stricken, post-apartheid white subjects by photographing them in peculiar, unsettling  tableaux that made bizarre theater out of their outsider status and appearance. They might as well have been the hillbillies from “Deliverance.”

Ballen addresses this by saying “ There was something that attracted me to these people, and it wasn’t political or social. It was something about myself.”

What do we see about ourselves in these gateways between vision and madness, the intricate shadows we each carry from our lineages?

Rainbow Journeys to Red Earth

I wrote this at the end of 2006 when I had relocated to the southwest. This is the story of how that all emerged…

When did this journey to the southwest really begin? As with most great journeys, it began years before actually setting out.

I come from both German & Scandinavian lineages, sailors and farmers, people of the earth and sea. I grew up in the lush northwest, never considering I might one day live in an arid climate. I loved hydrangeas and coastal beaches, complaining if it got over 80 degrees.

Looking back for early signs of this quest, I am struck by the power of one image. That one photograph captured my imagination like few other images ever had. In the 1990’s I was on a passionate spiritual quest. I read everything I could get my hands on about people’s sacred paths. Through this process I was searching for my authentic self. The one who loves ritual and reverence, magic and mysticism, creativity and contemplation. The part of me who knew she must dance with The Mystery.

The photograph was on the cover of an anthology of women’s spiritual writings called “Storming Heaven’s Gate.” In the image a woman dressed in flowing garments climbs a ridge overlooking a vast desert. She looks ancient, but is carrying a 1970’s boom box in her hand. It’s called “Angel Woman,” taken by Mexican photographer Graciella Iturbide in the Sonora desert {see above}. I fell in love with that photo, its power and paradox. Who was this magic woman, and what was she doing on this mountain top? Even the plants in the foreground are infused with a supernatural glow. I wished I could have a larger copy of it in my life, but thought it was probably a stock photo and unavailable for purchase.

Some time after that, my photography collecting parents suggested I look through their newest book acquisition. As I leafed through the book Angel Woman popped out at me.

I was blown away, and decided someday I would have that photo in my life. This was when I was still married and living in Seattle.

As you all know, the Universe had other plans for me, and sent me on a seven year Vision Quest. After my husband Chris’ death I did buy the photo, but its larger implications were still years away.

Horses swept into my life, as well as a rededication to my artistic roots. I became a seeker, searching for my blissful power. I went on Medicine Walks and pilgrimages to sacred lands. I visited intuitive horse people and their beloved horse companions. I painted and drew and dreamed and became alive again. I resurrected myself.

Through my travels I found myself returning to the southwest. I spent a lot of time in Arizona, going from one end of the state to the other. The highlight was a group pilgrimage visiting traditional sacred sites, culminating in a visit with a Hopi Elder on the Second Mesa.

The Hopi Pilgrimage came out of meeting Maria and Lynda Yraceburu at two of their Horse Dance ceremonies. In 2006 I had an ominous dream of a vibrating blue Kachina head. I made a five foot tall collaged figure from the dream named “Rainbow Guide”

When I asked Maria about the dream she told me the ancient Hopi prophesy of the Blue Star Kachina dancing in the square. When this happens it will signal the shift from the 4^th world of separation to the 5^th world of peace. She said she was organizing a group to visit some sacred sites of Arizona that her Grandfather, Juan Ten Bears, had been deeply connected to, culminating with Hopi Elder Grandfather Martin Gashweseoma sharing  some of his cultures ancient prophesies. The trip also came from an Apache prophesy of a group of 24 gathering to shift energies and reawaken our universal connection to each other.

Before the Hopi trip I began having dreams of being very happy living on red earth-deep red earth. This surprised me, because I did not think I could handle the heat. I had not realized that if I lived at a higher altitude it would be cooler than the lowlands. I also had an epiphany about Iturbide’s photo. She was a beacon, calling me to a land I could not yet imagine. I moved her next to my bed and let her dream me into being.

Another highlight in Arizona was a transformative workshop at the Epona Equestrian Center. They are doing very important work intuitively partnering with horses.  At the workshop I met a wonderful woman Kate Vigneron. She owns Madera Hills Ranch in West Texas. We hit it off so well she invited me down to visit. The first night I was there I sat in my car and cried. I was under a huge star-studded sky, with no street lights and noise, amidst vast rolling hills. It blew me away. It still does. It is a sacred, sacred place.

Kate and I started doing women’s retreats together, and when my beloved cat of 18 years died, I took Kate up on her offer to make it my first stop on my journey. So this is how I drove 3000 miles to an incredible piece of land in rural, rural west Texas.  And by the way, her land looks like Angel Woman’s terrain.

The trip down was extraordinary. I am so happy soaring down the open highways on my own. The entire trip was guided by an amazing amount of rainbows. In Eastern Washington alone I saw five.  One was a double, with one section so bright it looked like Technicolor Plexiglas. Another flowed perfectly along the geographic striations of the hillside. New Mexico had some great ones. Southern Utah was one giant earth rainbow.

The colors and formations of Utah truly stunned me. I drove through Zion, Escalante, and Capitol Reef National Parks in true awe. I strongly recommend visiting there.

I have always had a thing for Santa Fe. It intrigues me, even though it took me 39 years to get there. On the way down I stayed a week to see if I liked it. I met some wonderful people, and enjoyed its combination of urban resources mixed with the astoundingly beautiful natural areas.

I found a wonderful casita to rent today in a beautiful neighborhood of rolling hills and panoramic views of the surrounding landscape. I anticipate being very happy there. There are even two surrogate dogs I can love!  I am off to Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch for a week long retreat tomorrow and then New Zealand for a month. I should be back in Santa Fe by the end of January.

Blessings to all for a joyous New Year,

MelissaBee Horse Dancer

P.S. #1 I saw Graciela Iturbide speak about her work. Someone asked her what her favorite image was. She said Angel Woman, explaining that she entered her darkroom after a day of shooting, and that image was on the negatives. She does not remember being there or taking it.

P.S. #2 Terry Tempest Williams is always good in the Southwest:

I want to make my life a ceremony around slowness.

Time and space.

Open space.

In the desert there is space.

Space is the twin sister of time.

If we have open space, then we have open time to breath, to dream, to dare, to play,

to move freely, so freely, in a world our minds have forgotten but our bodies remember.

Time and space.

This partnership is holy.

In these redrock canyons, time creates space;

An arch, an eye, this blue eye of sky.

We remember why we love the desert;

It is our tactile response to light, silence, and stillness.

Hand on stone patience.

Hand on water music,

Hand raised to the wind is this the birthplace of inspiration?

Oh JOY! Welcome to my blog.

Welcome to my blog!

I am so excited and proud that I have moved into the technological age! The postings here will be a way for me to keep you updated about my current work, adventure woman travels, fun and informative workshops and events, my divination readings, other fabulous artist and cool stuff, inspiring spiritual information, and my original divination deck, The Oracle of Initiation.

my new web sites are up, and you can see all my bodies of work at:

www.Weiss-Steele.com

on Facebook I have a specific page about The Oracle of Initiation-You do not have to be on Facebook to look…

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Santa-Fe-NM/Oracle-of-Initiation/49839812155?ref=ts.

if you are on Facebook you can join the group too.

Here on my blog you can find out more from the menu in the upper right hand corner about

readings, workshops, me, and the deck.

Happy Day from sunny Santa Fe, and here we go!!!!!

Melissa

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