Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Bold Alice was keen to explore

Reality's sweet inner core

Her doors of perceiving

Completely receiving

She found out what Nature is for.

CHURCH OF THE ORDINARY

Breakfast Eucharist

THE CHURCH OF THE ORDINARY

When you sweep the floor

Gather your daily regrets into the pan

Release them into the afternoon sun

And let the dust of sorrow plant new dreams

When you wash the dishes

Scrub away the debris of mind

Let each bubble reveal the emptiness

Of your original face

When you cook food

Let your whole heart pour into every simmer and stir

Let every spice and kernel and grain

Contain

Your holy devotion

To this brief human Life

When you eat

Chew your own Love

Swallow the arms of the Mother

Let them wrap around your belly

With infinite compassion

Let every bite

Be an act of worship

When you bathe

Let your hands become healers

Strip the body of its tensions and confusions

Pour the water of suppleness back into your bones

Baptize yourself into holy presence

Let your skin drink the nectar of open delight

Let your fingernails scratch open 

Your tired old wounds

Until your wholeness is revealed

Beneath the static

When you walk

Let each toe pressing into earth

Be a thank you note

To the gift of ground

When you breathe

Let each inhale be a love letter to God

And every exhale a blessing to the trees

This is the sacred mundane

You are living prayer

And magic in motion

The church of the ordinary

Is the secret of secrets

For it is in these tiny places

That kindness lives

And this kindness

Is the doorway

To God.

 

 

----Maya Luna

OMEGA; Feral Secrets of the Deep Feminine

The Art of Parting

 THE ART OF PARTING

Even tho there are parts of the Earth

I never would have seen

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of the Music

I never would have heard

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of the Sea

I never would have smelled

Were it not for you

Even tho there are parts of me

I never would have tasted

Were it not for you

 

Even tho there are parts of you

I never would have touched

 

Were it not for you

 

Were it not for you

I never would have learned

Were it not for you

I never would have learned

I can live without you.

Two Moods: Eclipse and Emergence

Heart eclipse projected onto a frame drum.

ECLIPSE

 

One of the ways

August expressed her sorrow

after her marriage

fell apart.

 

Eclipse of the Heart

August O'Connor

San Francisco 1983 

ECLIPSE OF THE HEART 1983

EMERGENCE

On the other hand

August's Knotted Hare 

Capitola 2002

expresses her fondness for every kind of animal,

her delight in performing Celtic music,

Spring flowering,

one more joyous Easter:

our good Lord emerging from the tomb.

 

The Discovery of Anti-time

Jim Rintoul

THE DISCOVERY OF ANTI-TIME

This being the tale

of the future discovery

of what was at first assumed to be

counter-reality,

(and as such did not matter),

but which soon came to be known as anti-time.

 

Because anti-time could be surfed

like any wave,

the implementation

and subsequent proliferation

of anti-time devices

for the home and workplace

made anti-time big business

if you could just get your board

in the water in time

moving forward

against a headwind of the future

rushing into the past,

to ride the wave till it crashed

and let time (the undertow of anti-time)

reel you back into the present.

The discovery of anti-time

anti-mattered so much

that time began to matter again,

until it became so cheap to produce

that everyone spent it freely.

 

Jim Rintoul lives in Santa Cruz, 

was a prominent member of 

the Boulder Creek Bistroscene, 

and has just published  

It Only Laughs When I Hurt 

Aquarian Moon Productions (2024)

Len Anderson (1944 -- 2024)

Len Anderson

LEN ANDERSON (1944 -- 2024)

 

Len Anderson passed away in his own bed on Mattison Lane in Santa Cruz early Tuesday morning, January 30, tended by his wife, Elke Maus.

 

Len earned a PhD in physics from UC Berkeley, worked in experimental high-energy physics at Berkeley and in Europe, then switched to industry where he designed sensors for paper-making machines. 

Moving to Santa Cruz in the early 90s, Len developed his talents as a poet, co-founding Poetry Santa Cruz and Hummingbird Press, organizations which sponsored poetry readings, encouraged and published the work of local poets including three books by Len himself: Affection for the Unknowable (2003), Invented by the Night (2011) and The Way Home (2019).

In 1992, Len laid down a memorable mark on the poetry scene with his clever parody of Allen Ginzberg's Howl, the infamous anthem of San Francisco's Beat Generation. Len called his work BEEP crafting it as an anthem of the "BEEP Generation", in which he caricatures the behavior of the programmers and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley whose efforts gave birth to today's personal computers.

BEEP's opening line

A large part of Len's work deals poetically with spiritual and metaphysical themes. Like myself, Len was for a long time a practicing Roman Catholic.

 

Invented by the Night    p 28

And next, Len imagines for us a back-alley encounter between Science and Mysticism:

 

The Way Home   p 42

 

Modern quantum physics, consciousness and mysticism are not so easy to comprehend. These regions of experience are subtle, obscure, elusive and call out for a correspondingly subtle and sophisticated courtship. One example:

 

Invented by the Night   p 48

 

 Philosophically Len Anderson was a passionate agnostic who flirted playfully in public with the boundaries of human knowledge (as per the title of his first book Affection for the Unknowable). And in Len's books and readings he shamelessly reveals himself as a faithful lover of the Great Mystery. For his wife Elke,  his friends and community, and for fellow seekers after the Mysteries, the death of Len Anderson has left a big hole in the fabric of being.

Affection for the Unknowable   p 11

Invented by the Night   p 68

 

 

it's time to face this sex thing

August O'Connor

 it's time to face

this sex thing

 

It makes us men.

It makes us women.

It makes a joke

to please us

to see us smile.

It makes Beauty

to open our hearts.

It makes Love. 

 

            August O'Connor 

 

Fulton-Bennett Woodblock Prints

Kim Fulton-Bennett: Boulder Creek Library

Kim Fulton-Bennett is a man of many talents, marine biologist, science writer, composer and performer in several musical genres, primary traditional Celtic music where for several years he was half of the Dobhran ("otter" in Gaelic) duo with August O'Connor which entertained at coffee shops, festivals, weddings and private parties in the Santa Cruz area. More recently he performed with Blarney, a larger Celtic band. Inspired by his work at MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) he is currently authoring a website Seasons in the Sea which recounts the life stories month by month of conspicuous plants and animals living in and around Monterey Bay. Inspired by his contact with nature through marine bio;ogy, through hiking in the California wilderness and by surfing off the coast of Santa Cruz, Kim has been producing a series of woodblock prints some of which are now on display (Sept--Oct 2023) at the Boulder Creek branch of the Santa Cruz Library.

"I live in the redwood-covered hills behind Santa Cruz," writes Kim, "and spend my free time hiking the mountains and surfing along the wild North Coast. That's where I get the inspiration for most of my wookblock prints."

"My first woodblocks were simple designs for friends and relatives. But I soon fell in love with the magical process of carving a design into a block of wood, inking the block, and then seeing the design on a piece of paper."

"I carve my woodblocks by hand and make prints in small editions of 5 to 15 prints. Each print is signed, numbered, and dated. Because they are hand made, each print is unique."

Mt Lassen from Spirit Lake

Point Sur

 

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Rockview: Moonlight

Plum Blossoms

August O'Connor (1951 - 2023)

August O'Connor in meadow with big bodhran.

 AUGUST O'CONNOR (1951--2023)

Born in Southern California in 1951, the middle girl between two brothers, Raleigh and Greg, August O'Connor early experienced a love of animals, drama and mystery. She raised pet rats and played with snakes. And face-painted, dressed in leotard, rabbit skins, leather aviator helmet and shaking a coyote-skull rattle, she entertained her high school classmates as "Animal Woman: Protector of all speechless creatures." She starred in student plays, performed in an all-girl band and, starting as a freshman, she edited her high school's literary magazine.

 

After graduation, while living in Claremont, she met and married Bill O'Connor. Shortly afterwards they moved to Capitola where they attended St. John's Episcopal Church before moving to San Francisco to work at Grace Cathedral.

For eight years at the Cathedral, August O'Connor served as assistant verger, supporting Bishop Swing in ceremony, designing vestments and providing counseling, For six years she worked as chaplain at San Francisco General Hospital during the rise of the AIDS epidemic.

In recorded conversation with San Francisco social historian Lynne Gerber about her AIDS and other work, August recalled: "Lots of different lives but there is a chaplaincy thread running though it. The thread is love, I'd say, the thread is willingness to love. And to be loved, you know, because when you open your heart to someone, you might not be loved, you know." August's motto, painted on her gate post, is: "Every blessing on all beings."

 

August has worked in every aspect of the visual arts from large oil paintings to cartoons. In the 70s she was Art Director of Good Times, Santa Cruz's largest weekly newspaper. She designed logos for several businesses including Zoccoli's Deli and Pink Godzilla; producing signs, murals and window displays for numerous local shops. She also fashioned necklaces, earrings, bracelets, Celtic knot tattoo designs and unusual hand-hammered copper sculptures based on double spirals which she called "Buddha-mind roller coasters."

 

After leaving Grace Cathedral, August and her friend Nick Gardner began attending Native American sweat lodge ceremonies in Marin and Shasta counties under the direction of Karuk medicine man, Charlie "Red Hawk" Thom. When she moved back to Capitola, August mentored under medicine man Indio, eventually running her own sweat lodge events when Indio became ill. August's sweat ceremonies, carried out with Nick Gardner on the beach a few miles south of Pigeon Point lighthouse, drew a wide variety of attendees primarily from the nearby University in Santa Cruz. Also with Nick Gardner, she enjoyed many trips into the wilderness which she loved. 

 

In her home in Capitola, on one city lot, August put together a voluptuous Mediterranean garden crowned by an orchard of olive, apple, plum, lemon, loquat and persimmon trees. In addition to wild profusions of flowers, the garden produced food – lettuce, tomatoes, beans and potatoes as well as fruit from its trees. August's garden was a haven for bees, butterflies, bats and small mammals and had been officially certified as Wildlife Habitat #29951 by the National Wildlife Foundation.

 

August was a splendid chef, could create a tasty meal out of most anything. At San Francisco gatherings, she garnered admiration for her party specialty: chocolate truffles. Her turmeric toast made an unusual breakfast treat and August's mushroom omelettes were arguably the best in the known universe.

 

August sang and played guitar and bodhran (Irish frame drum). With flute-and-whistle player Kim Fulton-Bennett, they formed the Celtic duo Dobhran (Gaelic for "otter") which played at weddings, wineries, coffee shops and private parties and they also recorded a few instrumental CDs. Dobhran has performed at numerous Scottish and Irish festivals in Santa Cruz and Ben Lomond. A familiar presence at local Irish music sessions, August recently started a new group called Blarney with Kim, Nick Herbert and Matt Johnson, which has performed on stage, at private parties and most recently at an Irish wake in Boulder Creek.

 

Friends have described August's character variously as "playful dignity", as "innocent sophistication", as "kaleidoscopic life force",  as "remarkable, unique, eccentric",  and as "a tempestuous whirlwind." She herself explained "My life/is one kiss/with life."

 

She was hospitalized recently in Santa Cruz for a serious infection. And, on March 24, a week after St. Patrick's Day, early in the morning at age 72, this former chaplain, artist, musician, sweat lodge leader, gardener, beautiful and loving woman, August (Augie) O'Connor, passed away peacefully in her sleep.

Says Nick Herbert: "August came from a larger place and shared some of that with the rest of us."

Said one good friend: "August filled pages; she was a tome."

Added another: "August was an Irish rose."

I LIKE MY HANDS
https://quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2023/07/i-like-my-hands.html

I Like My Hands

August playing her bodhran (Irish frame drum)

 

I LIKE MY HANDS

Hands, I like my hands
They do so many things
Well for me.
Hands, I like my hands
They do me well.

Feet, I like my feet
They do so many things
Well for me.
Feet, I like my feet
They do me well.

Friends, I like my friends
We do so many things
Well together.
Friends, I like my friends.
We do so well.

Lord, I love my Lord
He does so many things
Well for me.
Lord, I love my Lord
He does me well.

Life, I love Life
It's so good to be Living
And, and when I die
I'll be so glad for what
I've had.
And, and when I die
I'll be so glad.

AUGUST O'CONNOR SEPTEMBER 1977

SWALLOWTAIL JIG
https://www.tumblr.com/quantumtantra2/721702466218065920/blarney-band-matt-johnson-august-oconnor-kim

THE AUGUST O'CONNOR KNOT
https://quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2023/05/kauffman-flypes-rolfson-into-oconnor.html

DEEP IN MY HEAD
https://quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2023/06/deep-in-my-head.html