avad

Notes from the month....journal snippets and memories....

initial install @Tribeca w/Beth, Perry, Tapp, Jeff, Matt, etc

work on Prayers Long (2pieces)...painting and 'lighting'...coloring the nails each day....

install Prayers Long (through darkness and rising)with Brent @ night Tribeca
drink and apps at Sazon Puerto Rican Cuisine- delish!- chewing on sugarcane in drink (Mojito Sazon)quesadillas de ropa vieja, and brent's delicious soup with pieces of pasteles-tasting...ahhh my senses and memories ignited. love feeling, music, decor. hot pink, orange, black.( read more )

Ok this New Orleans under water thing is just way too surreal.
I am not quite able to wrap my head around it as reality.
*staring at pics*
*remembering the streets before*
WHAT is going ON here. so horrible. to have everything gone...house...loved ones..
and now sharks and things from a ruined aquarium...wha?!?! *wake from weird nightmare please*

Also reminds me of one of those old dreams of course.

And this is the way it happens, I tell you. The universe is THIS way. It astounds you and caresses you sometimes.
We stop at Borders tonight...and I look through some magazines while having a yummy (free!) caramel latte....and I stop and gawk at the most beautiful sepia photo of a young boy seemingly READING to a big beautiful elephant! I write down the website listed...and come home and land here: ashesandsnow.org
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cannot IMAGINE a more perfect capturing of my dream!!!!!!!!!I am in a bit of shock. A beautiful, moved, intense shock.
If you scroll through the pics...there are all these with the elephant...head down...against. and the feeling is just..oh my SO much like the dreammmm...my sweeet sweeet elephant! It's you!! It's me!! It's...
oh I am so tempted to get that catalog. Or at least the one small book on elephants...
how much is 25 euros??!!
Can you believe this??

As you may have noticed, I hadn't been able to post about the tsunami. Been working up to it I guess?....*sigh*...trying to find perspective.
The tsunami is a recurring element that I've been dreaming about for many many years. And though I dreamt that NYC was destroyed exactly one month before 9/11....and I've dreamt so many strange encounters the day or week before they happen....and I really really am starting to accept this as part of my life...I never wanted to think of the tsunami dreams as anything but metaphor. Sure, there was a part of me that supposed that it might be the way I would die eventually...because the visuals and details were so VIVID....but mostly I thought of it differently. Signifying metaphorical change...evolution of perspective...
but
Now this.
What may be the greatest natural disaster of the century?....ugh...*exhale*
So, great. Thanks. Thanks for the warnings. I feel so..so...helpful. really.
*choking on sarcasm*

*sigh*
Ok,let's move on to dream visions that I do feel optimistic about. And let's give them a bit more seriousness since well...I'm not about to risk it, you do as you want, call me a loon or a witch or whatever. From another very powerful dream...I KNOW that the thing that will/can save humanity is 'when everyone decides to do something together' for the benefit of humanity. And this is where I got the idea for the 10% club. A voluntary donation vow that links the individual with the fates of those around the world. This tsunami may actually turn out to be the tipping point I've been imagining that would have to happen...the trigger in our awareness of how much we can do...if Everyone gives a little. The dream said it would be with the power of the web.(this before I was using computers btw)and before I read about Buckminster Fuller (I was led to HIM by a short dream of NYC under a dome...which I later found an exact image of in a book..a proposal by Fuller). Ok so we see dream patterns, no? Wouldn't you be paying attention to certain things if you were me?

SO, with great anticipation and hope I am watching the counter on Amazon.com....which records the Millions that have been collected just through that site alone for the relief effort. (Last I checked it was at over 13 million). I donated my 10% of my paycheck through there and will donate the 10% from all the art checks once I get them (should be this week)also through there....just to help move that number along. Because I NEED this to reach the tipping point. IF Amazon.com will be the portal for the time being, great. It's already set up...and has the trust of millions of people to handle their credit cards. (In the dream there is another portal...one I'm supposed to be working on believe it or not).
*sigh*
OK,let's do it. Let's show how much we can do collaboratively with our Threads of Empathy.
THis has to be ongoing. The nature of this disaster is so huge...what has to be done to help people get back on their feet goes way past immediate water and food. Let's do it. Let's do what needs to be done and keep doing it.
Because they are us and we Are them. And we Must.
TO think we are separated is Illusion.
I may not know exactly what is in store for us all....but I have had a glimpse of something wonderful that is Possible. Is a Choice. I really hope we decide to do it.

Yesterday morning I had the craziest dream...woke dumbfounded.
I had been part of a group of people sent through a humiliating bootcampish prisoner-ish line-up obstacle course like area. Several guards revelling in their positions of power and making up humiliations as we went a long. Lots of crawling on all fours...heads down, hands over heads, rushing as they laughed.
This went on for quite a while. It was terrible.And part of a whole evil 'revolution' of sorts.

Then somehow I am in a white fairly bright room...and I am gazing at these 3D models....toylike but so UNBELIEVABLY intricate, so unfathomably detailed and precise... a SANE person could NOT have made them. It was the genius obsession of Absolute Madness. In particular I remember looking at this ice realm...with a pond and caves and excrutiatingly intricate patterned/crystal formations in the ice....all this made somehow by hand...with such precision...there were layers...like a large wedding cake...in which other realms were hidden...and on the bottom layer the divisions were vertical slicelike...in mathematical perfection...revealing an inner chamber if looked at from one exact direction. I cannot explain in words how crazy the details were in this. All I can say is that in the dream and then even in waking I still believed/believe it was impossible for someone to even be able to see such a thing...that it was not of this world.

In the dream I knew that the maker was in the room and that he was Insane to such a degree that it was just inhuman....and I lifted my eyes from the models and looked at the face. This man..was the leader of the whole 'system' that was being implemented outside...the reason for the prisoners...the person behind this malignant 'revolution'.His mind was so complex and convoluted...autistic immensely dangerous genius. So many things going through my mind but I felt it important to relay something about my taking in of these models he made..my appreciation despite the obvious madness that made them obviously repugnant somehow. I looked into his eyes with my head cocked to one side...and everything I could not say coming out of my eyes.

And in a sort of quick gasp movement he backed away and disappeared in a flash. Above the white bed where he had been (illness?)was a dark brown wood cubbeyhole, fairly large...and out from that space came a PUPPET-KING....a marionette...wooden and elaborately dressed and painted...(again the vividness of this visual was shocking- I so wish I could share)and the puppet 'looked' at me and began to go into convulsions of some sort. Somehow this triggered a realization in me...and I said to myself "Ah, this is where the Puppetmaster falls in love with the Girl" and I smiled to myself understanding the story I was about to be a part of as if remembering a very rich classic ancient tale.

You see, the 'PuppetMaster' was in fact the Leader-madman...He could not deal with the new emotion that he felt when the girl (played by me)looked at him with the tinge of understanding that he had never experienced before...and so he assigned the experience to one of his split-personalities...in the form of the puppetmaster (which was but one of many but a main one).

And now the drama would have to work itself out...in that there would of course be a battle of sorts between the leader personality and this 'puppet' aspect of himself and all the other personalities...and it would be a long and dramatic story that kept the audience (me also even though I was playing a role) at the edge of their seat. It had more of the quality of The Nutcracker than of a modern tale....I so wish I could play for you those scenes I saw so clearly...
I just don't understand how my mind could have come up with the amount of visual detail it did..
SO CRAZY.

When I sent pics of my recent empathy box artwork to my dad he responded this way:
"Beautiful idea!
My views: NYC, East River
Chasm
Segments/Separation - yet connected by threads as if to close chasm & unify opposite sides
May also bring insight into 911 tragedy and connections!"

EXACTLY!!!! :)

Strangely enough, I had a dream in November of 2001 that really relates to ( THIS view of the artwork )

I've decided to share the dream I had on 3/5/2002 . It ranks up there with,if not surpasses all the crazy powerful dreams I've had in my life. It has helped me to understand something I have been longing to understand...

Upon waking I wrote down as much as I could remember, but of course much of the detail is lost. I remember it as a much more detailed and action-packed dream...but this is the gist:

THE DREAM:

I am on the verge of figuring IT all out (the big picture, understanding/seeing IT- how the universe works-how to utilize the infinite energy of the universe)....like an amazing puzzle I have been working on for years and years. At this point others know I am working on it and I am being watched and spied on by powerful groups who all want the 'answer' for their own purposes.

I am indoors, surrounded by people rushing this way and that....I am not sure who to trust or who is trying to stand in my way. I know I must try to concentrate and ignore everyone in a way.

I have a box- a printed cardboard contraption folded into a complex shape...printed with diagrams and maps and such (Buckminster Fuller?) that is an important part of the puzzle. The printed matter is not my own, but the organization of it into this shape was something that felt new and relevent. A woman is asking me questions about the box...and I am answering her as I go about my business of trying to figure out more. But then I notice a hovering craft above the building that is taking pictures of the boxthing through a skylight window. I then realize this woman has been trying to distract me while this happens. So I get up, walk over to the boxthing, pick it up and relocate it to an area where it is obstructed from the view of the skylight. For some reason I know that noone can really STOP me, they just can try to distract me into giving the information somehow. This is because there is some sort of a time countdown and the moment is very soon when all must fall into place. I am the closest to solving the puzzle, so these others are just watching and trying to understand what I'm figuring out as I go about it, so that they can ACT on the 'answer' before I can. (Incidentally, this all relates to a dream I had more than 2 years ago where I was told I needed to figure this thing out, and that in the wrong hands it could be used for selfish power instead of for the good of humanity).

Anyway, so the moment is approaching and I don't feel any closer to figuring out what I'm supposed to DO.....

But then I feel a change inside me...a feeling like I'm not in control...but that I have a ROLE- and whatever it is that WANTS to happen is going to make sure that I do the right thing. So I feel this AMAZING sensation- this excitement AND this feeling of LETTING GO/SURRENDERING to it....which is part of the answer. A kind of confidence/FAITH that without ever 'holding' the whole answer in my mind I can trust in it...and be a part of it..

And then my father appears. And he hands me two things. One is a crude wooden tool of some sort, (a bit like one of those perfume bottle stoppers with the long tapered end which dips into the bottle?) but of VERY old, very chunky wood. And the other is a telephone.

And he looks at me strangely and says with deliberate slowness: "Verena called. ... Why don't you call her back?" Verena is a new friend who I feel a strong strange love for as if she is somehow my own child who came to me, as if she were somehow born out of my chest. It is hard to explain the quickness and the depth of our friendship. But in the dream I know by looking in my father's eyes that this is part of the answer. I take both objects from his hands. The wooden thing must be some sort of key....but it is so crude that it just does not seem to go with the modern printed Buckminster Fuller cardboard thing, though previously I (and everyone else) assumed that the box was the most important part of the puzzle. Now I suddenly knew it had nothing to do with high-tech stuff....I knew of an old schooldesk in the other room...and so with almost no time remaining I walked straight to it, hoping this was 'right'...and with just a bit of nervous doubt I inserted the tool into a hole I saw in the front of the desk. The wood was so old and brittle I was afraid it would break with the turning, but I turned it like a key...and the desk opened.

Inside was a large white chamber (much larger and more modern than could be 'inside' that ancient small desk) and within this clean space was only one thing- a sort of rolled up white tape (like a ticket roll shape or old-style measuring tape) with writing on it.

I felt the energy all around and within me- an 'it's happening right now' feeling that is impossible to describe in all it's overwhelming, hairs-on-end,Ultimate moment exciting vibrating intensity. I understood that I needed to call Verena on the telephone, that I needed to be connected to her while I read this tape. That everything was in place right now for an activation and the connection WAS the activation, like an electrical cord in a socket to turn on a complex lighting system that extended throughout our known reality.

Someone tried to get me to say what the writing was on the tape...someone I knew....but I realized it was a trap and that I had to connect with Verena specifically before reading it. So I dialed...and she said "Hello?"...

...and I held the tape and started to unwind it reading it aloud to her as the energies rushed and seemed to form themselves around me and everywhere...

and it said:

VERENA, I JUST HAD THE STRANGEST DREAM...

and I was crying reading it, realizing the simplicity,the loop, the timelessness,spacelessness of all that was occurring and had always been occurring and was everything I could hope or imagine...that the infinite energy resource is in the connection between people, the giving of oneself to the moment with a surrender and an open heart, of letting the current move through you to others, riding on words but not BEING words....what is happening is MUCH MUCH MORE.

THIS DREAM IS TRUE.

much love, avaD

The Door 8/8/2002
I feel I'm entering a new phase of my life. There is no use resisting, I can see all the steps that led me here to this door and now it's obvious I must open it and walk through. I'm hesitating a bit, feeling the fear of 'success' which means in fact a whole lot of resposibility and a commitment to working to my fullest potential. My lazy side protests. And also the part of me that would prefer to be 'just' a quiet hermit artist...with more nondoing than doing, more observation than action, and endless stretches of time to just Be. But I have to acknowledge that I feel a deep sense of purpose that is unfolding day by day, and it would seem unthinkable and irresponsible to try to ignore it. This is who I am,in this life anyway. These are my talents and strengths and this is what I may try to do for this world. Each of us has a role. And we must play it to the best of our ability.It may not be the actual actions that count so much but the flowing of energy in a certain direction, the expansion of the heart, the willingness to try. Dreams came to me years ago, speaking of things that seemed so improbable and so beyond me. Now my life is catching up to them, pathways illuminating.
I've only been able to really talk to B. about it. I just don't know where to start in explaining to anyone else. There's so much that lead up to this vision, all my artwork was one stepping stone after another, all my reading and searching and looking and contemplating and dreaming and hoping and hammering. So many ideas coming together, connecting, showing different scales of the same hope. Guide me, I asked. I feel so guided. Help me to see, I asked. I am starting to really see. How can I help, I asked. I am realizing.

Now I ask for the strength not to back away from this. For the strength to open the door and walk with confidence into this new phase of my life. For the ability to balance new projects into my life without letting other aspects suffer. To let go of what needs to be let go of. To have faith in my abilities. To flow with life forward and not cling to branches and logs in the river.