Mother Turtle

Good Morning -

I had a relatively free-form day yesterday, which was nice for its structurelessness, but meant that I had to do some weaving and connecting to come up with a theme for the Virgen.

When it was time to make the Virgen, I excused myself to our sweat lodge (living room on the other side of the veil (hanging flannel sheet)) to sit in the dark with a burning Virgen candle and think on my day.

I thought about the nice breakfast we had that morning with our friend (the one that was on Mt. Lemmon with us) and another friend who had come down Saturday Night to join us for an Evangelista experience at Solar Culture (I call it an "experience" rather than a "concert" or "show" because the sounds made were really more of an experience - it transcended mere "music".).

I thought about the other disks of Ken Burn's The West that my partner and I watched over dinner last night. We realized right at the end that we had skipped the second episode on each disk - the credits play at the end of the first episode on each, so we thought we were done and it wasn't until the credits rolled last night on what we thought was the last episode but that didn't have a "wrapped-up" feeling (in as much as you can "wrap up" westward expansion and all the atrocities that came on the coat-tails of that idea) that we realized we had been changing out disks when they were only half over.

I thought about how I had taken my car to the car wash to get it ready to post online for sale. I thought about how as I was vacuuming out the pounds of straw in my back seat (I had used my car to transport the bale of straw we used for garden mulch), I found pine needles (I had also used my car to transport the Christmas tree), bits of broken glass (said tree wasn't tied on the roof well by the 16-yr old at Home Depot, so the first corner I turned as I drove home, it started to slide off. I couldn't retie it with the string available, so I put it in my backseat. It was too long, so I rolled down the window for the top to stick out of. Turns out, the top was heavy enough that when it rested on the window, it shattered), and the small black stone turtle I had bought for my partner when she was interviewing for the job she has now.

I had thought the turtle was lost because a few months ago I couldn't find it in my purse and had had it there when I interviewed a month after my partner for the job I have now.

To find it resting under the driver's seat felt so good. Turtles are such good, strong maternal energy and it's just what I need right now. One of the Native American creation stories calls North America Turtle Island - like we are all resting on the back of a big, strong, loving mother turtle.

In thinking last night in the sweat lodge of what to put on the Virgen, I thought Turtle would be a good image. To that I was going to add an image of a car to honor my posting of the ad and a clock because it feels like I'm battling presence and waiting right now and it's making me a bit crazy (step out, step out. It's so my choice.).

I set to looking for these images in a San Diego travel magazine, but couldn't find any of them. I then grabbed a Georgia travel magazine, but without conviction in my heart since I didn't believe that Georgia had turtles.

Turns out, all three images of turtles came from the Georgia magazine. I was so delighted by finding them and struck by the sense of needing to simplify and focus that I decided to fore go the car and clock and just let the turtles be with the Virgen. The background is an image of a woman sitting on a coastal rock from the San Diego magazine (I had meant to cover her completely, but if you look closely under the turtle wearing red, you can see a foot sticking out) - it was a peaceful, centered image and good as a foundation reminder for me right now.

So, that's our Virgen. Mother Turtle and the Virgen on a coastal rock, peaceful and centered.

Here's to that. Here's to mother energy - through the Virgen and through Turtle. Here's to peaceful. Here's to centered.