Art loses its ego when paired with purpose: lovephotography.org

If you are a Collector intrested in limited editions or books for all...

2010-06-30T23:35:00.000-07:00

I am at a place where a feel honored to be living from my art-work. It is an incredible honor and one I will keep growing for as long as I have breath in my lungs.

Most of the images that you see on my website will be available upon inquiry.

I am including here a slide show of images I had the privilege of showcasing in a solo show last June at the National Arts Club:
They are a limited edition of 10 so if you are interested please inquire as soon as your heart moves you to do so...*

I showcased last year in Paris Photo and amongst a room full of classics in New York last fall, between Warhol & Mapplethorpe, Baquita and Kara Walker-- so many amazing dream come trues- with 16 shows through out the year and Tiffany & Co. collecting for their stores internationally.

I have four books available also. two coffee table to smaller--

I have so much more to share..

I promise to heal this body-temple of mine and keep moving forward in innovating ever new ways to add beauty to this world.

If you are interested in an image you may contact me here; flyingishard@gmail.com

or leave a comment here.

iF YOU ARE IN nEW yORK AND CARE FOR A PRIVATE VIEWING do make that clear in your request.

A selection of images can be viewed at:
Baron
545 West 45th Street
New York, NY 10016
T: (212) 664-0800
F: (212) 664-8550

Thank you so much. I look forward to hearing from you & sharing with you.

All my best,

//layla

Doc being created in collaberation with Tarmak film UK*

2010-06-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

LAYLA LOVE from Tarmak Films on Vimeo.

the film will be interwoven into layers of ever growing hope that springs from the well within-- be well with-in* ox

Showcasing in the White House for Haiti Flag Day*

2010-06-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

It was an honorable beautiful experinance to be there in the White House touring the West Wing, seeing my art hanging, meeting those it was helping, watching Michelle standing tall in grace a smile exouding all sorts of love and possiblity.

With the chance to add to the White House Collection, leveling seeds of transformation, as art heals.

It was for Haiti this time, the image came from the set of Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water By Alixa & Naima who together form Climbing Poetree.

I meet so may beautiful souls. So deeply inspired to keep creating and sharing in the most positive and far reaching, deeping transforming, trandsending ways...

illumated in the glow of saving lives while doing what we love... bridging the gap between dreams and possiblity.

an ode to bringing magic to everywhere...*

ox

An Ode to Mary Daly & The Life Ahead

2010-01-06T15:37:00.000-08:00

A great being has passed.

Let us stand still for a moment and recognize that which must not be forgotten.
As we climb towards the sky.
Mapping that path to our freedom.
In the freedom we create while living.

No matter the constant rush, a gun or golden wand pointed at your head.

Life is rushed, a never ending to do list that we continue to either grow from and flourish amidst or we grow heavier with each burden.
Each burden validated-- the truth of our own stories being lived-- between what we are and what we envision ourselves to be. Between the socially-constructed norms burst the likes of Mary Daly-- her star light unexpectedly bold & filling the room with the notion that 'God' may not the only way?! SHOCKING! Like Galileo's vision of a starry night in a galaxy set right.

Push push push -- push, uncomfortably & steadfast, into the boundaries of conformism-- strike-- the heart-cords of many world wide while opening minds.
Roam into unspoken terrain-- being the first to utter some boundless possibility between the sisterhood of our time- close the doors-- In the shifting of scales we move forward but there must be safe space between us-- by any means necessary-- there is a programing of war systematically taking down the beautiful strength of our womynhood daily-- let us create private spaces to address these and other issues in complete freedom-- just as men have allowed themselves to do for as far back in history as I have learned.

May we stop fearing the space between us and maintain it well enough-- will all the love & creativity that we share, that we may brace ourselves for necessary battles while knowing which battles are able to be transcended like illusions.

The world is a very big place and the cord of womyns space- the room for The Feminine Mystique, for the ghost of Betty Friedan to meet with Daly-- I imagine a meeting of the minds with Frida Kahlo, Nefertiti & Alice Paul... all forming this beautiful light up there for us draw from & to pour into.

In the name of the Mother, the Daughter & the Goddesses. In the Name of Kali. In reverence for the Hideous Hags, In the name of all our mystic mothers- to Mary Daly with her never-ending fervor the living--

*May we reach out to each other a little more right now.
-- May we know that our ancestors and our evolution are two ends of the same pole.

I urge us to spend more shared time on these adventures of living herstory.
United We Stand: Divided We Fall:
Learning to draw from the principles of survival-- we must all be the Phoenix Rising- this must be the turning of the tides-- that only comes once in a blue moon-- this must be the sounding of the alarm.

I believe Mary studied theology so much so she could navigate the heavens quickly, to lead us beyond the pearly gate illusion and into the garden within this seed of life. We are the torch bearers in this most auspicious moment in the dawning evolution-
- upon which we are the pivoting point-
- we are the center of life on this earth-
- the birth place of all life-
- & Yes, I agree with Mary that we must have private space for the freedom of our expression -our knowing-
- we have been bound for centuries while mother earth has been being raped & pillaged-
- the rivers have run dry and been replaced by our tears-
-We are very resourceful creatures:
we will continue to nourish the earth & our self's, each other & all life through this darkness.
The light is breaking.
an alarm call blaring--
telling us it is time to train-- to buck-up-- to rise up--!!!
In the collection of our power and most importantly of consciousness. Of self-love. Revolution must begin with personal evolution-- with our own reconnection of mind-body-essence-ideas-tribe-we are the artisans, the warriors-- I am calling on all my sisters--

Trauma into transformation.

We all identify with different heroines-- let us speak their names more often-- let my generation be blessed with all these tools of technology that allow us to share our stories more and more-- and as we take up more space & more shape with collective vision-- it may take a whole new form-- we may be able to learn to create a community between us-- out of love-- out of rage-- fear-- and the place beyond fear-- a safe space where we can hold a womyn's spirit-- the red tent is needed-- the time for healing is needed-- we are all walking wounded for one reason or another-- carrying some world pain, worry or scar-- but the big picture is always getting bigger and so maybe all is well-- everything-- we have been through-- every trail in our shaping has taken us to a place where we can continue to love each other against all odds throughout and beyond time.

I take back my power to uphold & honor rather than to mourn & remorse.

There is no more time to recall our loses-- let us recount our endless reservoir of talent, knowledge, mystery & might between us.
We must be the fusion of all of these strengths-- to bring them forward-- to call upon a future where we have let go of the boundaries-- the personal wounds-- enough that we can begin to have a dialog that embraces the content of our character rather than surviving the mold of the character we are profiled to be.

I believe it is a matter-- at this point -- of almost letting it be.
this fallen empire-- some thousands of years old-- is chasing its tale to a certain death-

Let it be so so we may truly rise above:
again calling on the Phoenix within all of us-- the fires are burning-- let us rise-
- so we can stop getting burned,
burnt out-- that we can stop running the rat race-- wash off its filth & start planting the seeds of radical fresh newness- NOW!

We are calling on the universal qualities of the female temple to house strong intuition, a great sense of understanding, imagining and working steadfast towards a shared foundation upon which we can all build of unique sense of being.

We have the freedom to draw on everything that has gone right in this world-- merge it together into a new recipe to nurture the future just as our formothers did before refrigeration, when the bread would go stale and thus bread pudding was invented- we have a way to be alchemists-- to transform what is there into what is needed. So there is a need for us to really keep honoring the underground railroad, the grassroots- our own mammas & daughters for getting us this far.

Then there is Evolution. I learned about Mary Daly first through Susan Powter... who taught me that although that bread pudding was resourceful for its time, it is outdated. That mind and body are one of the same and we are what we eat-- so let us stop the insanity-- and realize the key is oxygen.

I believe that the key ingredients are love, support, inspiration & peace.
May we find in the year ahead-- in all time-- that we do indeed leave our mark.
May we live our lives where our actions can mirror our intention with less convolution & interference.
Spend time on the self every day in any way that we can-- let this be the year we clear the plates, sweep the dust from under the rug and let it blow out the door into the wind.

There is no need to fear the skeletons in the closet anymore-- they do not belong to you anymore-- they belong to a past-- send them off to Mary let her have the pleasure of atoning & sinning big with the whole mess that's been made.

I am not so interested in History classes as I am now in the FUTURE Studies-- the study toward HERSTORY.
May we be the co-creators of something beyond the limits of our current vocabulary.

It is a time to evoke all the fire in our belly, the might of our finger tips... in our body -- so lucky we are right now to have this form right now-- with all these senses about us. Relish, revel, rebel, reflect & rejoice.

I am working towards having a Love Craft-- a ship that floats through international seas bringing women's art & performance around the world while inviting women from every port aboard to record and broadcast parts of her.story through a floating satellite equipment media center. We would have a safe majestic ocean to explore the possibilities in thriving and find the tools between us to build those bridges to a world without categories...

With my greatest respect for Ms. Daly-- may she keep decoding the art of living dangerously with such flying colors-- I think I saw a new hue around the setting sun-- there amidst to what is possible.

embrace & let go.
simultaneously as is breath...*

Taking a moment for grieving is never a weakness- it is in fact the heart of the matter. May we always reflect our compassion upon the tides of spirits from this realm & others that allow us to flow, to float, to live & drown. To make waves & quantum leaps.*

putting the grrr back into grassroots.

with love,

//layla

what does it mean to spend a week by the sea and never reach it...

2009-12-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

it means you are knee deep at all times in the ebb and flow of the art world: Basel Miami:... feels like cherry blossom season the art is so beautiful hanging, floating all around you-- your eye's booming- your heart alight.

My heart lights up, head is beating to the rhythm of a constant pounding of nails.

:::: 4 shows to hang:::: 4 openings to have::: thousands of comrades to admire, collectors to inspire... there is not a moment to spare, joy & sorrow, the lost & the found hang their stories we walk through like quilt makers putting together a patch-work quilt of possibilities... each one of us looking through the kaleidoscope for that which warms and inspires us. Some folk are more jaded than others. You see the rich and the the rich at heart and try to be clear that your intentions are to shine from within. The gold diggers, the optimist and the romantics swirl together, the opportunist meets the philanthropist in the back room... like it was a back alley transaction on the lower east side.

Possibility are hanging everywhere... it is fashion week for artists. Opening night Basel preview. I am wearing a press pass along with perils -- full access -- it's like the Oscars for the arts-- silk and sequences adore a plethora of beautiful women. Their sink looks like an investment, their bodies are meticulously sculpted. Men in suits that are woven with luxury often accompany them.
These living sculptures are some of the most interesting in the room. Transfixed I watch, if they walk behind, beside or in front, whose the boss, the lover, the artist, the collector? The lines blur. Do these men collect beautiful women or do these beautiful women collect a stream of everything they desire and the man is just as relevant as this seasons best or worst dress?

Everyone streaming together into a maze of monuments-- some half formed ideas and tacky bling intertwined or course-- it is unavoidable.

Still there is room to grow-- for the art and the power of art to keep expanding.

We are alive right now for a reason. We are coming together for more than just the market place. We are coming together to release: to recognize: to activate the desire to strengthen the creative force between us. To air our emotions, express our concerns, our visions of the future, the past, our hopes and our dreams.

The starving artist meets the hungry collector-- each of us has what the other needs to keep going... it is a game of trading-- the artist creates-- and when done with heart and soul the collector invests. The artist then has the ability to keep creating, striving. Everybody is looking for a porthole-- something to escape into-- to be born from.

The collectors often have full & busy lives that involve many hours of work and dedication. It takes a lot to get to that place, more often than not, so they need that beauty, that mystery, the allure, the power and the purity that art can yield...

The artist plays a roll as vital as the physiologist, the historian & the teacher-- the transmitters of the sacred and sublime.

I am here to catalogue the invisible layers of time. My goal is to source life, color, hues of meaning and metaphor from the divine, art is healing, is temple, is the sensual side of science.

Color effects your moods, I try to play with roses hues and the times when I am feeling blue. I enjoy soft color coded walls.

Before arriving I worked on a new series. I loved every part of the process of making them-- from the original moments when the shoots occurred to the space of events that has lead me to this moment. I feel blessed, inspired.

I had the most amazing tribe in my journey through Basel. Artennae, Cheryl Moody & Lisa Silvera who gave me the privilege of having two shows with them and bring in so many wonderful people, good hearted people, together folk who know art, who seem to actually love it. The whole experience was beautiful. They still housing me now-- as I sit writing this on a clear glass desk with my images on either side and the amazing collections.

We are making so many wonderful plans for the future and a sudden ripening is taking place. The work is still up this week which is nice because now we get to have private showing and spend more one and one time-- which is a great luxury in placing the right art with the right buyers.

I do not like the idea of selling just for selling-- everything I give I give with love.

Anthony Haden-Guest with his book signing/reading from his latest book: The Last Party. The hidden treasure maps to an era long past and yet lingering with some sort of renewable charge-- everyone is sparking, peeking interest. We are transported by the characters of the moon and the spoon as Anthony inscribes my book while acknowledging the symbolism is from before my time.everything surrounding the era, the vortex is there, written as only Anthony could, with the greatest of tenderness and reflection, with a rawness that is so honest it can be nothing other that refreshing... it is a book I highly recommend you add to your collection... scribed by a man who has lived through it all and come out dancing-- one of the few men who dare to rock a cunt rock revolution jacket and keep the room spinning far after even the party kids have dropped into lucid piles in corners awash with the red light that streams from the Delano late night.

I had the great blessing of sharing several creative processes with the amazingly breathtakingly talented Alex & Allyson Grey. Their work as both artists and community builders is so consistent and ever growing. So beautiful and inspiring to see those who are living the higher frequencies of consciousness that art can generate and perpetuate. I was able to show them my work at Scope and have a little mischievous laughter with film crews and muses painted and coated with 24-karat gold. It was a moment where everyone was glowing. The there was the honor of being included in their opening at Moksha Art Fair. Allyson and Alex where doing live painting on the stage. I was able to gift them an image from the first time we collaborated. There where fire dancers, bird ladies & the goddess aglow- phantasmagorical-- I was transported back to Byron Bay, Australia-- dancing under the open moon...

Then there was the body painting at Scope, with that huge warehouse. Thanks to Anonymous Gallery & Scott Alger for making that venue so accessible for us to create and show in. Jorghe Casu brought all his talents and paint from the big apple down to join in the humans as art fest--for the body painting, Mone for the transformation. Sara for her body & energy.

There are so many people who brought my personal journey at Basel alive. To Amy Rosi & Peter Rosenthal for being being so gracious and shining at the opening Basel night, and for inspiring me by finding the time to make it to my first opening down here. Then the wonderful Ms. Pam Miller who after spending 20 years at Tiffiany's decided to take a chance and fly down to see what we can do... ah and oh how many things there are to do... How many amazing things we can form with her highly channelled creative force. Dennis flew down from Baron, my gallery-home- in the big city.

Thanks to all the previewers-- the backbone-- to god.... to the Love & Lion Capsule that was so well received down here- yeah for beautiful wearable art!! Thanks to Dani for making all the details come together for seven 18 hour days in row! To Amir for filming so much of this.... ah the list goes on and one. So a simple toast to everyone that came down, flew in, showed up and help make it all happen...

With the deepest, of: love, respect and gratitude.

Time to rest, tomorrow is another full day of follow through and then maybe... just maybe I will see the beach before I go... I will be in Miami for almost another week so if you are here please do say hello, stop by.. share time and art.

Love to those who love to those who live it....

Basel Miami 09* Dec 3-7th... Two Shows and someone magic to unveal...

2009-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

I am so excited to be part of these beautiful shows with this amazing team: Artennae:

I had the honor of meeting Cheryl serendipitous 4 years ago... everything unfolding beautifully into this pinnacle moment... may life continue to be a series of visual bursts and flourishing...

So grateful for your beautiful energy & work embedded into our events here~!

First show address is:
Wynwood Lofts Art Complex
250 NW 23rd St., Loft #203
Miami
Open daily Dec. 3-6, 2009 from 12 noon to 6 pm
Opening Reception Thursday Dec. 3, 2009 6 - 8 pm

The second show address is :
4100 NE 2nd Avenue, ground floor
Miami
Open daily Dec. 3-6, 2009 12 noon - 6 pm
Opening Reception Friday Dec. 4, 2009 9 pm - midnight...

Layla’s beautiful energy is transmitted into her work. As a collective, we are drawn to her international voice which sees no color, race, gender or religious differences. Diversity is key in our company, in the artists we represent, and in our view of the world.

Our mission is to amplify Layla’s voice, and to share her point of view with the world. Contributing to her vision for her work also allows us to participate in her continued journey in the global art world. With the current shifts in the world, global perspective is more important than ever.

With an artist like Layla out in the world, recanting messages of unity, beauty, and joy, we believe that people everywhere will respond to her poignant delivery of goodness and make a conscious decision to care for each other. That is the beauty of Layla and her images.

Thanks, love. I"ll address the rest of your email at the end of the day today, as we are in meetings all day. Hope you have a great day!

The Artennae Team

Mission: ARTennae = contemporary art consultants + marketing + public relations

tuned into the visual arts. We are masterminds of tasteful & relevant exhibits and events geared to honor the artist’s individuality, harness the intense energy of guerrilla marketing / new media, and elevate the work to the next dimension. We have access to the brightest global art stars & we are intent on shining a vivid, laser-focused light on their vision.

My highest regards to you,

Cheryl Moody
&
Lisa Silvera

***Please come join us... I would love to see you there... let's make more and more beautiful out of living.. ox

Hello Beloveds: just a friendly excited reminder that we are having a meeting this evening from 6-8 and meeting at a Goddess Gala Sat Nov. 14th 7-11pm

2009-11-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

Hi Hope this finds you well. I wanted to remind all of us that there is a meeting this evening for all that can make it it would be brilliant to see as many faces as possible-- bring all our beauty and ideas together...

I apologize for the last minute reminder or notice-- still trying to bring all this together-- we all have very busy lives but we will get this up and running, smooth & steady in no time -- once we have some captains executing plans that all fit together in a big picture sense.

I have been speaking with the NOW NYS & NYC Chapters, as well as, National. They have agreed to put some of my images & cards and the wearable art of Love & Lion designed with Ms. Yuki Tanaka onto their sites for the holidays and ear mark 30% of the profit for themselves and another 30% for the Task Force---

I am hoping this adds some serious money to the honey-pot so that we can do full force actions, big beautiful stunts. The idea of surrounding the city with women holding hands is one that we have envisioned and have had the great offer from Ms. Liz Abzug to work with her and the UN to make this possible during the Women's Summit in spring. This could be a revolutionary moment in herstory!!

We are going to need a million people to come together in solidarity to actualize this. We will need talent from every field to pull this off... let's live change.!!

Hope to see you this evening. If you cannot make it we will also be in the space this Saturday evening for a Goddess Gala from7-11pm. The space, Baron -- a high end eco-friendly show room for Tiffany's and such and it's owner Paul have offered to us to us the space for the regional NOW convention and the whole month for whatever we can think of... let's have fun!!
If you are in NYC and you make art, media, dance, politics, law...whatever you do you are needed tonight by the NOW Young Feminist Task Force... we are planning bug beautiful events, working with the UN to-- it is all new-- there is room for you to grow and add your voice, your joy, your spirit....joy in action*

545 West 45th Street. Between 10th & 11th. 3rd Floor 6-8pm

www.baronnyc.com

Important Exhibit: Let's learn more ways to help end sex-trafficing...

2009-11-09T12:59:00.000-08:00

Sex Trafficking Exhibitition Hosted by Mayor Bloomberg and Actress Emma Thompson
November 9, 2009, 6:45 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

Mayor Bloomberg and Actress Emma Thompson, and a host of celebrities and famous activists have allied together in presenting the Journey Installation, a “unique and provocative art installation depicting the “Journey” of women trafficked across the globe into the sex industry.”

The art exhibition will feature seven shipping containers that will illustrate the personal account of a woman that was sexually trafficked. Each shipping container represents the stages a woman experiences in the industry: Hope, Journey, Uniform, Bedroom, Customer, Stigma and Resurrection.

Emma Thompson said: “People just don’t want to know about this issue – it’s hidden, it’s criminal, it’s perverse and yes, it’s happening right on your own doorstep. Journey is a remarkable piece of collaborative, creative and confrontational art that profoundly challenges people’s perspective. Come and see it for yourself and then tell us if you agree….”

Mayor Bloomberg said: “Journey brings human trafficking out of the shadows – I hope its arrival in New York sparks a conversation among New Yorkers about this pernicious form of exploitation. My Administration has used coordinated enforcement, tough new laws, and partnerships with service providers to fight human trafficking. Our efforts are overseen by a task force of police, prosecutors, service providers, advocacy groups and academics who welcome Journey and the unique attention it will bring this inhumane and criminal activity.”

The Journey Installation

When & Where: Journey opens to the public on Washington Place, off Washington Square Park, on Tuesday, November 10th. Hours of Operation are: Tuesday, November 10th – Friday, November 13th 12pm-8pm, Saturday, November 14th 11am-7pm and Sunday, November 15th 10am-3pm. Produced in partnership with the City of New York and the City of London.

Check it out if you can and spread the word.

Women's Media Center, A Tribute to Carol Jenkins

2009-11-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

Picasa Web Album

"Carol Jenkins is the President of the Women's Media Center and a Founding Member of its Board of Directors. An Emmy award-winning producer, former news anchor and correspondent who covered presidential politics as well as international issues, Ms. Jenkins led The Women's Media Center's online publication and its advocacy initiatives. She is a national spokeswoman for women and the media, arguing the case for inclusion of women throughout the media, as well as the telling of women's stories in television and film, radio, print, and online." -- WMC blurb of Ms. Jenkins

With special thanks to Liz Abzug for opening the invitation for me to be there and for closing the night off with such beautiful ideas and possibility.

//layla

Love & Lion in a capsule line by Love Photography & Chateau de Lion

2009-11-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

This is a sample from our clothing line, that I am so excited for. Been working with Yuki Tanaka for two years on this extensive line. This is a sample we've put together for the potential collaboration with NOW, the National Organization for Women.

Wearable art, use your body as a billboard.

Mean what you say, say what you mean.

Peace & Action. Love & Kisses.

//layla

You have the right not to remain silent: NOW: Possible images for collaborating with the National Organization for Women

2009-11-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

It is with the deepest love and respect for NOW, the National Organization for Women, and the work that they do on many levels, across the nation and around the globe, that I hope to be able to add some, or all, of these images to their treasure chests of art action and fundraising possibilities.

Art heals the unbreakable.

Love heals all.

*Further details to follow

//layla

rising*

2009-10-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

media matters*

2009-10-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

So I came out for this evening as it was a valid effort in taking back the night. I am in the media & I am very busy. I am happy...doing really well & really lucky. My photographs are hanging on the same walls as a Mapplethorpe, a Warhol, a Walker. I have a show coming up in Paris and then Art Basel. I am over the moon.

I am happy & excited & I am a feminist!

I am part of a group of women who know the importance & value of being alive during this time. I put this knowledge into action in many ways. One of them is in a willingness to take to the streets with little more than paper & pen. Our voices will be heard. It is time to reclaim the balance. I wish we had big money behind us & lots of time to mastermind something with far greater impact. Sadly, it is the lack of funding in the women's movement that does not allow us to really rise as we must. But change is coming. Cells of powerful and affluent women are coming together in ways never seen before. I have circled the globe twice baring witness to our growing strength in numbers. These are amazing, talented, fun, brilliant women who care about not being raped and blown away for entertainment's sake - whether it is in a theater or in the fields - hunted like deer as men kill & destroy what is beautiful for sport.

We have the right not to remain silent. There are far more than 16 of us; there are more than 3 billion women and 3 billion men who are impacted daily by the poison that misogyny spreads.

As media makers this is the greatest responsibility of our time. Words are the most powerful & shaping tools that we have.

Life came from women - we are the givers of life - and if someone wants to take that for granted, as many do, then there becomes a terrible dis-ease on Earth and all suffer. This amazing sample of concerned citizens, both female & male, who came out that night are testaments to the American Dream and to freedom of speech. They put the grrr back into grassroots. Tucker Max expects all the glory of freedom of speech and yet systematically takes it away from those voicing another opinion by photoshopping their protest posters to read the opposite of what is intended. This is virtual rape & censorship perpetrated by Tucker Max and his Frat Boy Mob.

Yes, I wish you had shown up at that Bank of America to witness hundreds taking back the night and standing up against the mainstreaming of misogyny and detrimental themes of sex & violence. The degradation of women has become a multi-billion dollar industry; porn shops sell shelves of movies about the raping of young girls, old women, and everything in-between...

And now Tucker Max wants to take that to mainstream theaters where children walk by his posters.

For each woman who gets raped there is a chain reaction: the lives of entire families are destroyed. It is no laughing matter and it is the laughter which allows the rape to be so systematic.

Like the dehumanizing of Jews in Hitler's Germany, this is no less serious an issue. It is a toxic poison spreading rapidly. I hope next time there are thousands of us and that we can bring forth the strength in numbers to reclaim our birth right to walk the streets in freedom & in safety. Let's all meet again next Tuesday. Anyone interested contact me. I will have pictures posted on my blog from the evening: www.lovephotography.org (click on the top right corner)

We were just getting warmed up. Next time we can take a billboard out in Times Square. We have more tools than we realize and enough are people sick of this mess. It is time to clean-up and take charge.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: I take my rights seriously. This does not make me an angry feminist. Rather, it means I am awake, conscious, caring, and an active citizen.

Revolution begins with Personal Evolution.

Let's all raise our voices - let's come together. It is a time of celebration and of coming into our rightful power.

I advocate responsibility, an awareness of the consequences of our actions. We all know the effects of propaganda & brainwashing. We all know that humor is sometimes used to dehumanize. The military uses this same tactic all the time: let's make jokes about "rag heads" and then we can just shoot at them and rape them. It is an act of war to make 'em scream. It will be real funny...just like killing pregnant women!

Tucker Max and George Bush Jr. are similar characters with a dangerous amount of privilege; they appeal to the lowest common denominator: greed, mockery of the value of human life, and the need to kill & destroy for ego's sake.

I wish I lived safely in a land in which my being was respected and in which I did not have to worry that if a fellow woman is late to a meeting that she has not been dragged into an alley.

-peace & healing between us.

*************

Maybe we could all agree just to look at ourselves a little more and to have a little common respect for our shared humanity and the sharing of this planet.

I know many amazing men and women. I know all of us are hurting in ways and it is often hard for us to bridge communication with each other. Books like "Men Are from Mars and Women Are from Venus" and "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" become bestsellers because we live in a capitalist society that bases its never-ending sales pitch on our insecurities and pitting us against each other.

There are people hurting in the world - these are our shared stories. Many women are acting out roles perpetuated by propaganda which keeps this nation afloat and which leads us to believe that we as women are ascribed a value based on our appearance: cosmetics, diet pills, botox, willingly cutting our bodies open to fill cyber roles. Men like Tucker Max are truly sick and should be treated accordingly. I am not advocating the death penalty or suggesting that we burn him on the stake, however. That is what has happened for thousands of years: we seek revenge and therefore spin in ever greater circles. We have come to a place where we look in the mirror and we are all plastic or hopped-up on steroids. We are snorting coke. We are fucking like machines...and our humanity is lost. Anything but the airbrushed must be destroyed! And that which does not fit these criteria must be senseless. The hunter and gather is locked away in a cubical, working a job he hates to make money to feed the retail therapy of a 'gold-digging' wife. But let's not forget that women own less than one percent of the world's property and wealth, and in many places women are traded like cattle via wedding vows that silence them even further. We must break the chains because no one is happy. Tucker Max is mad, the feminsts are angry, and people are just getting on with their day-to-day lives...but the currents affect us all.

As Max has used his artistic voice to share his stories so honestly, we can see that these are the uncomfortable truths of our time. We should thank him for bringing them to the surface so that we can address them in public forums as we are doing here.

I would like to dare us all to take a long look in the mirror until we can start to dissect what we see...until we see who we are; what we can do to heal ourselves because we all need to heal. Dear people: this is a beautiful time to be alive. We can be willing to stop long enough to see that another world is possible...not only possible but on the way.

We are the shapers of our own destiny. Let us be mindful of what we ask for. All of us - stop - take a moment to consider deeply - beyond the neon lights or the silver screen: What is it we are seeking? And do the moves that we make take us closer or farther away from that goal?

There is no need for us to keep calling each other names as it defeats the purpose of evolution. We are here with the time to write back and forth; we are the ones with the time to help set this world straight and to create balance. There is room for us all step-up to the plate and to make life amazing.

I do not need to be drunk to get some or be able to take some - and I am certainly not interested in going to Hell after so much hardship in this life.

I am interested in creating paradise here on Earth between us all by camping down and taking note. Peace is possible. Joy matters and we have a value of zero dollars per day. Life for men and womyn and femyles and males could be better. Let's not just bring our parents' shit forward - whatever sickness your mamma and your pappa and your schools placed on you...why don't we all just let it go?

Open up to the power our generation possesses.

Let's make more movies, have more debates.

I pray for the best in us to come forth in this moment.

We are never the same person twice.
Change is the only constant.

May we all change in ways that respect the humanistic boundaries that exist and by upholding the safety and dignity of each other through the actions we take.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

These are things that came to light a century ago.

I am looking for the innovative and this is an invitation to everybody - to just make it good and to hold ourselves accountable.

May your journeys be safe and blessed.

//peace//

Why Tucker Max is the new George Bush Jr. & reclaiming who we are outside the politics of stupid...//peace

2009-10-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

Layla says:
My belief is that we are all doing something - we are all trying - but carrying different worries, fears, egos, pains of our own that make us battle over and over. The truth is that underneath it all, we are looking to be connected in healthy ways - women and men do not want to be forever stuck in a battle of the sexes.

Let's start talking about some really new ideas! I dare us! Come on...we have been playing "boys against girls" since pre-school. Instead, let's see what adult ideas we can muster up. ox

Very excited to invite you to this amazing opening that I am so so honored to be part of: September 16th (7-10pm) at Collective Hardware

2009-09-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

For Immediate Release

AMP Tracks Presents:

Black & White Show
At Collective Hardware
September 10 through October 3, 2009
Opening Reception, Wednesday, September 16th from 7-10pm

September 11, 2009—NEW YORK, NY – AMP Tracks is pleased to present The Black & White Show, an exhibition at Collective Hardware (169 Bowery at Delancey) curated by Meghan Carleton and Amandine Lesaffre Freidheim and sponsored by Daniel K, the prestige diamond jewelry house. Void of color, the exhibition explores the graphic clarity and dynamics of black-and-white art by emerging to blue-chip artists. The Black & White Show will be on view from September 10 to October 3, 2009. The gallery will be open from noon to 7pm daily. An opening reception will be held Wednesday, September 16th from 7-10pm.

Artists of all eras have used the black-and-white palette to explore the power of contrast. The simplicity of this use of medium brings forth the potential for dramatic and vivid expressions. As the two values compete for the eyes’ attention, stark and evocative forms emerge, in a powerful accentuation of imagery. This exhibit will highlight the range of possibilities of this basic yet bold representation.

Featured artists include: Vik Muniz, Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Irving Penn, Darren Almond, Ryan McGuiness, Layla Love, Brody Neuenschwander, Frank Stella, Evan Gruzis, Will Ryman, Barbara Kruger, among others. The exhibition will debut works by Rodofphe Gombergh and Sandrine and Riccardo Barilla—three European artists exhibiting in New York for the first time.

Collective Hardware is NYC's newest collaborative and gathering point for multi-disciplinary artists and creative minds. The space is a melting pot for the visual arts, organic cooking, audio video and film screenings, visionary conversation and much more.

AMP Tracks is a New York-based curatorial enterprise founded by Amy Rosi, Meghan Carleton and Peter Rosenthal that promotes art and culture through exhibitions, discussions, public relations and cultural community outreach.

###

For more information please contact Amy Rosi at 212.953.5177 or arosi@amptracksinc.com

ARTENNAE: Tribal JOURneY...*

2009-09-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

For immediate release – (Miami, FL 31 August 2009)
On the heels of a bright, shiny summer in Miami’s progressive Wynwood Art District, things are beginning to stir as the art fairs prep to make their Fall/Winter debut. Artists, gallerists, curators and reps are busily preparing for short and long-term exhibits that will all serve as the precursor to what will be a dynamic December for art in Miami.

On Saturday, September 12th from 7-10pm, Wynwood 2nd Saturday Art Walk will launch in full swing and artennae global art consulting proudly presents their premier, group art exhibition entitled “Tribal Journey” featuring Catherine Rogers, Fine Artist along with several other globally celebrated artists and creatives including de la Haba, Jackson Lynch, Troy Woods, Barron Claiborne, McKay Otto, Layla Love, Damani K. Diop & Artifacts by Majestic Lips.

Artennae global art consulting is an unconventional (consulting and marketing) tribe, formed specifically to elevate emerging artists from all over the world.

As a company, we have come together as a group of “creatives” from various walks of life, each with strengths designed to form a strong union, with the goal of highlighting the talented artists and their work outside of the typical gallery setting.

These are the times when circumstances imposed on us by destiny actually allow us to create new and innovative methods to share positive messages with our fellow man. So it’s natural and perfect that our first exhibit is a declaration of coming together in support of the arts, which will not be diminished during this “recession.”

The artists we’ve chosen in our inaugural show work in varied mediums, from painting on surfboards, sculpting with found objects, photography by world-renowned talent, and painting. Diversity is embedded in the art work, in the languages they speak, the cities where they reside and the cultures they embrace.

3 of our artists travel the globe as their art form, photographing people from many ethnicities and cultures, and seeing humanity from a “big world view”.

The inspiration for the show’s theme “Tribal Journey” came from a series of paintings that our featured artist, Catherine Rogers, created. Her bold and dramatic tribal-influenced work is a wonderful contradiction to the gentle nature of the soft-spoken lady from Key Largo who embraces yoga and a good glass of wine. Still waters run deep for this delicate, powerful flower - more passionate about painting than anything…and in her 60’s. Once again, coming together of talent from surprising sources.

There are many different tribes in today’s world….corporations, social networking, sports teams, small businesses, non-profit organizations, Girl Scouts / Boy Scouts, even political parties. We move in and out of various tribes every day of our lives, joining forces for a common cause. “Tribal Journey” is a timeless tale of clans or tribes who band together - moving in unison. artennae’s top picks for fall 2009 reads like an e.e. cummings’ homage to humanity’s renewed sense of honoring the ancient tradition of community.

“Tribal Journey” is a reflection on returning to the age of the human bond between those of “like mind” rather than focusing on the bonds of perceived outer appearance.

Please join us:

Saturday, 12 September 2009, 7-9pm

Wynwood Lofts Art Complex, 250 NW 23rd St., #203, Miami, FL 33127

info@artennae.com ● RSVP Appreciated ● Generously supported by REMY MARTIN

For artist information/intimate preview: 305-546-9889 or 305-576-4844

Nomads Trail of Tears Bands Survival Cultural Counter Culture New model Personal / Self-made Tribes Community Art Tribes Cavemen & women Bedouin African Native American Aboriginal Humans are social creatures Clustering Gangs / Posse Male vs. female New media tribes Hawaiian / South Pacific Amazonian Entrepreneurs Corporations Social networking Birth creativity Tribes of Israel Change sports teams groups of people Rural tribes Urban tribes your friends your family your pack yourself...

Come join us...this is an invitation*

Art Heals: The Unbreakable. Love Heals All: A Testimonial.

2009-08-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

the first with images & words
by layla love
an ode to surrender:
we are inescapably connected in this collaborative performance called life.
members of the tribe share tales of the human condition.

Love shares her great respect for comrade featured artists:
Alex Franck
Alicia Piller
Emily Gendron
Joel Stonington
Jorghe casu
Linda Obuchoska

This montage of paintings & photographs created by Earth angels from across the globe comes together to celebrate the human potential when we choose to no longer be divided.

*Burrow together in a cocoon of live jazz by Ms. Tracy Stark. Bring yourself as art, dance, move, share ~ this is show & tell - brought alive - we barely have time to act, let alone rehearse...*

Proceeds & the commission and simpatico donation of a percentage of art sales will go to Love's "Keeping Focus" healing fund.

*Love will be presenting new images as well as her full first edition collection, which was showcased at The National Arts Club earlier this summer. Baron is now hosting a bon voyage before the images set sail for shows overseas. And Love will head West to continue a much needed medical treatment to foster her recovery from a rare eye disorder that is currently threatening her vision. The healing is happening thanks to the beautiful stir of energy & action that have come from within & been sourced by this ever-growing ebb & flow of community.

This is an intention to bring forth an evening of warmth, of passion, and the obsessive need to overexpose...to give voice to the journey, to merge the tangible & intangible elements of existence, and to enjoy.

Joy Matters

2009-08-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

Art Heals By Layla Love - Photography Exhibit this coming Wednesday, June 24: 6-9pm

2009-06-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

Hello Dearness,

Art is why I get up in the morning -- so it is always an honor and a joy to be able to share...

This is an invitation to an opening this coming Wednesday, June 24th, 6-9 pm:

I will be showing around 50 brand-new, editioned photographs alongside amazing wearable art couriered by Yuki Tanaka.

The National Arts Club
15th Gramercy Park South
(between Park Ave & Irving Place)

More art & wine 'til late at:
Baron
545 West 45th Street
(between 10th & 11th Avenues)

* The show will be open for an extended amount of time so if you happen to be unavailable for the opening but would still like to pass through, you will be able to do so for at least a week (or two) at both The National Arts Club & Baron.

* If you are able to come that would be wonderful...wanting to fill the space with good art, good people & good intentions. I have been working to shape the show around the notion that art heals. They are the things I have seen that have inspired me most. I am grateful to have the opportunity to share and to provide a place for our community to once again convene, celebrate, share & support. There are many beautiful folk involved in making all this possible -- so much gratitude to the National Arts Club, to Cathrine Johnson, Anthony Hayden-Guest, Eric Franck, Eric Trometer, Yuki Tanaka, Duggal, and to you, us, we...may the best in us be lost and found, and reborn into a network of folk with new stories and a way of coming together, of rising and perpetuation growth, inspiration...change being the only constant.

Love to you butterfly comrades.

Let me know if you can make it -- hoping so.

Love to your everything,

//layla

Le Cirque d'Art Gallery Opening and Performance with music and dance to 2am. This Friday, March 20th at Collective Hardware: 169 Bowery. Art Heals*

2009-03-16T07:50:00.000-07:00

Dreamers, Birds, & Lovers of Life,

I am coming together with a most beautiful collective to throw a benefit gathering of heAleRs, aRtists, dAnCers, aErialiSts, fAntastiC ObSERVErs, giggLers, and the SaSSiest of NYC...This Friday, MARCH 20TH from 6:30PM to 9:30PM...with an afterparty until 2am.

Collective Hardware: 169 Bowery @ Delancey, NYC

I am trying to keep my eyes strong and bring more and more art, healing, beauty, life and movement into this world. Feel alive, feel blessed, feel the power of action, know that joy matters: these are the principles we had in mind while putting together this show.

I hope to see you there. Feel free to spread the word and to bring whatever creative force you have into the room. It is an open space. My friends, comrades and I are filling the walls with art and the room with performances. There will be an open mic after the set performances, room to dance, and a place to celebrate being alive through the good, the bad, and the ugly. All you really need to bring is yourself. Starting with just your body; we promise to give you all we got.

Putting the grr back into grassroots.

Bless & Be Blessed.

//layla

2009-02-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

**My goal in life is to expose...through everything I do. I work to create images that capture the beauty of the heart and the complex journey to protect 'it' and let 'it' shine. As the collection grows, 'it' turns into a river, bringing the viewer to a place where he or she can clearly see that the beauty of a heart exists in every living being.**

beautiful life*

2009-02-19T15:39:00.001-08:00

beautiful life*

When faced with losing my eyesight, I look to heal my mind, body, and everything in-between...

2009-02-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

These are images of the back of my retina upon being diagnosed with Multitocal Choraiditis, a rare eye disorder in which inflammation creates lesions on the back of the eye tissue - the most sensitive tissue in the body.

You can see in the images all the white areas of inflammation taking over the back of the eye.

I am working on healing both through natural and Western medicine.

I am also working with some Earth angels to create a benefit so I can make these treatments a reality.

I also want to be overall healthier than ever before so I can bring more art and action to the front lines.

Thanks to all of those involved in the rescue and healing mission. May I act as an Earth angel in your lives as well...

Working through to the grand finale.

//layla

Climbing PoeTree: Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water — The brightest most beautiful torch

2009-01-04T20:37:00.001-08:00

Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water is imperfectly-perfect:
painful, powerful, visionary. It is one of the most compelling pieces of art I have ever seen.

There is a kind of bliss that comes from ignorance and another that comes from having seen and felt with eyes and heart wide-open...and finding the bliss within the layers.

The foundation of our survival is Mother Earth. Water makes up 70% of the Earth's surface and 70% of our bodies. That is no coincidence.

There are no coincidences here — yes, everything that is happening is happening for a reason.

Climbing PoeTree have spent years calculating the meaning, distilling the purpose, planning the mission. Crafting a siren's call through their art and relentless activism; bringing the same message over and over to thousands of people...

WE ARE ALIVE RIGHT NOW FOR A REASON.

again:

WE ARE ALIVE RIGHT NOW FOR A REASON.

Alixa and Niama have harnessed the power of their combined voices and vision into a compelling road map for issues at hand. They have taken the most pressing issues in this time of golden crisis and woven them, roots with hope into the fabric of solutions. You leave armed to the teeth with tools of your own, local connections, how-to guides, and a spirit ablaze.

THERE IS NO PLACE WHERE LOVE CANNOT FIND YOU.

again:

THERE IS NO PLACE WHERE LOVE CANNOT FIND YOU.

This passion must become our own and Hurricane Season has become a place where one is invited to ignite, add their own light, to join in. This is a place of community, tribe; it is a place where poetry meets action and philosophy meets resolution.

Let me tell you from my own firsthand experience, creating something organic from the grassroots with intention, precision and follow-through is no small feat. It takes the conjuring of miracles, the belief in a higher self and in an urgent purpose.

"We are living in a time of unnatural disasters ya'll." The words come out of both of their mouths simultaneously and it is beautifully propelling.

Their poetry is percussive, it hammers, it bellows, it builds momentum.
It breaks you open and it finds in that openness the precious seeds of life and the power of individual and community spirit.

This performance will take you deep — far beyond being entertained.

If there is one lesson I see so clearly here, it is the fruits, the gifts, the knowledge and the joy that comes from following through. Be ready to jump into the deep end of everyday, see what is happening with a sharp eye, follow through and watch something snow ball. Hurricane Season is growing and at a rapid pace.

When I look back through the catalogue of experiences I have had while traveling the world, my journeys were always based upon documentation, which in turn has grown/solidified into the mission of creating an image bank for revolutionaries. On the tour, Sallome announced that all of my images are there for free usage to those of you working in media, visual arts, and activism — just contact me, and as long as you have a mission that I feel reflects unity, progress and peace, I am happy to share all that I have.

I felt honored and privileged to document this illuminating event in our herstory. Climbing PoeTree's work has been received by sold-out crowds and enthusiasm across this land. In fact, Alixa and Niama received the Common Folk National Award for Community Activism just a few weeks ago in Washington, D.C.

They should be supported, hailed, and inhaled in our light. Support by our action. Make time in your new year to listen to their words, get the album, and see the show when you can!

As one rises, we all rise. As we reach out our hands to each other, there is only more support, more room for letting go, more space to take flight.

I learned and grew endlessly from documenting the work of these women and the amazing group of humans they have brought together to yield a vision:

Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water

With gratitude and respect.
Bless and be blessed.

love is all over the place — there is nothing wrong with your face...

2008-11-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

Late night, working all night again, working all week long. almost finished creating the sales page. ah, finding ways to fund the revolution within from without...and vice versa. half of us are dying from a lack of means while the other half are dying from a lack of meaning...trying to create some sort of win-win - something for us all...here late at night....

i was seeking inspiration or distraction. i drew this card. i liked the message. thought i would share...

a toast to the rebel in us all.

oxox

Osho Zen Tarot : Major Arcana

4. The Rebel

The Rebel
People are afraid, very much afraid of those who know themselves. They have a certain power, a certain aura and a certain magnetism, a charisma that can take out alive, young people from the traditional imprisonment....

The enlightened man cannot be enslaved - that is the difficulty - and he cannot be imprisoned....Every genius who has known something of the inner is bound to be a little difficult to be absorbed; he is going to be an upsetting force. The masses don't want to be disturbed, even though they may be in misery; they are in misery, but they are accustomed to the misery. And anybody who is not miserable looks like a stranger.

The enlightened man is the greatest stranger in the world; he does not seem to belong to anybody. No organization confines him, no community, no society, no nation.

Osho: The Zen Manifesto: Freedom from Oneself: Chapter 9

Commentary:
The powerful and authoritative figure in this card is clearly the master of his own destiny. On his shoulder is an emblem of the sun, and the torch he holds in his right hand symbolizes the light of his own hard-won truth.

Whether he is wealthy or poor, the Rebel is really an emperor because he has broken the chains of society's repressive conditioning and opinions. He has formed himself by embracing all the colors of the rainbow, emerging from the dark and formless roots of his unconscious past and growing wings to fly into the sky. His very way of being is rebellious - not because he is fighting against anybody or anything, but because he has discovered his own true nature and is determined to live in accordance with it. The eagle is his spirit animal, a messenger between earth and sky.

The Rebel challenges us to be courageous enough to take responsibility for who we are and to live our truth.

giving thanks...

2008-11-27T11:55:00.000-08:00

And each person is such an infinite mystery, inexhaustible, unfathomable, that it is not possible that ever you can say that "I have known her," or, "I have known him." At the most you can say, "I have tried my best, but the mystery remains a mystery." In fact the more you know, the more mysterious the other becomes.
Then love is a constant adventure....

*I am thankful for love: in my life and all around me.

thank you to every person and every pool of possibility that has been my life.

thank you for the shared heart-ache and struggle, thank you for the laughter and the moments in between all the big moments - all the moments that count seem to be the ones we are not counting.

thank you to all the revolutionaries who have been fighting the good fight with gratitude in their hearts year round. thank you to all of the people not going shopping tomorrow. thank you to all of those finding god before and in themselves without needing the ugly stories of our history books to make this day something special. just a day to give thanks.

I am thankful for my new president: watch this video - it makes me thankful.

I am thankful for family, for community, roots, growth, for everyone I have ever known and have yet to know.

I am thankful for the breath in my lungs and my desire to evolve. I am thankful for morning and for night...and for the light that seeps from us while we are sleeping.

I am thankful that we always can move into what is happening with fresh eyes. I am grateful for the many rebirths I have had in this single lifetime.

Today I pray for all living beings, for Mother Earth and Father Sky, for the best and the worst in us. I pray that the glimpse of global joy that we have recently received continues forward into a world that learns to celebrate together with as much passion and drive as we have learned to fight against each other.

Everything is waiting for us to dream it - everything is waiting for us to dare it. Everything is everything and anything is better than nothing. so be thankful. just be greatful.

I tell myself this daily. And to all those I have hurt - to the friendships in peril - with sunita, ziad and allison - so much healing is needed. time that we don't seem to have or be able to catch-up with. well, the time is coming. I am so grateful. so thankful for what we share...even when we have our differences. even when we are at our worst cause I am in it for the long haul - for better, for worse, in sickness and in health.

I am grateful.

oxox

voting as an aphrodisiac: cause nothing is more sexy than giving a fuck...

2008-11-17T15:58:00.001-08:00

I have a long piece of writing to add here...coming soon. I am still caught-up in the moment - in myself.

2008-11-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

An Unprecedented Event Peaks on Waves of Emotions

By N. R. KLEINFIELD
Published: November 5, 2008

You had to watch, and if you couldn’t watch you had to hear.

In this election for the ages, Albert Watson, 56, was the doorman stuck with the night shift on Tuesday evening at an apartment building on East 96th Street in Manhattan — no television, no radio, no smartphone or smart anything, a man starved of information on this night of all nights.

He had to know.

Joanna Gunderson, 76, from the 12th floor, recognized this, and she padded down and told him about Indiana. His friend from church, Faith Murray, who was home glued to the television in the Bronx, called him frequently with feeds. Here she was with news of 16 states deposited in the Obama column, his man on the way.

As the desired verdict was reached, Mr. Watson knew he was going to “be drinking all kinds of Champagne tomorrow.” He savored the moment. He said, “Today is a date to be glad and rejoice.”

At last, when the stampede of polls and blogged opinions and phone-bank calls no longer mattered and it was a done deal, supporters of Senator Barack Obama arrayed everywhere from a Las Vegas casino to an Iowa supermarket to a call center in Gurgaon, India, exulted with jubilation and abundant relief.

For Senator John McCain’s backers, it was no longer possible to bank on comebacks and upsets. Spin finally stood still. The underdog would remain just that.

In an energized election heavily draped in symbolism, response was particularly emotive at settings already permanently encased in history’s glow. At the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the home church of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a “Watch Night” was accompanied by a candlelight vigil across the street at the crypt where Dr. King is buried.

“It’s just like a new world,” said Leroy Johnson, 80, a former state senator who was a year behind Dr. King at Morehouse College. “It’s a new life.”

The quadrennial institution of election-watching reached something of a frenzied pinnacle. Just about everyone felt compelled to see the concluding moments of this exhausting and exhaustive narrative unfurl — state by state, talking head by talking head.

Throngs of parties and events bubbled throughout the country, almost colliding into one another. Updates turned up everywhere.

At the Izod Center in the Meadowlands, where the New Jersey Nets were hosting the Phoenix Suns, the most raucous applause came not from dunks but from half-hourly election dispatches beamed on the Jumbotron. When Pennsylvania fell to Mr. Obama, the crowd erupted, clapping their thunder sticks together. During timeouts, even the players looked.

Parties were de rigueur at college campuses, where any election (or actually, anything) qualifies as adequate reason to party.

At the Sykes Student Union at West Chester University in West Chester, Pa., the election event was choreographed to be lively. Hence offerings like pin the tail on the donkey/elephant. Hence have a picture taken with McCain and Obama (18 Obama, 2 McCain). Students were urged to dress as their candidate for the chance at “awesome prizes.”

Once victory was projected, students mounted tables, hugged and chanted, “Obama, Obama.”

“This broke the back of racial politics,” said a tearful Marc Fauntleroy, 21.

Matt Whittall, 18, an accounting major and McCain supporter, felt that too many potential McCain voters on campus had been overwhelmed by Democratic “propaganda.”

As pursuit of the highest office tends to do, the scalding campaign had singed certain relationships. At the East Ridge Retirement Village in Cutler Bay, Fla., dinner is communal, starting at — yes — 4:15 p.m., hard on the heels of Happy Hour. In recent weeks, some Obama and McCain supporters had insulated themselves at separate tables, politics overwhelming shared interests in golf, bridge and the best foot ointments.

It was that way again on Tuesday, residents migrating to candidate-pure tables as drinks and later beef stew and maple-glazed turkey were served. At her table, Patricia Bayer, 85, announced that she had voted for Mr. McCain, prompting Frances McClure, 74, who had voted for Mr. Obama, to exclaim, “What? I’m out of here.”

And she was.

Stomachs satisfied, everyone repaired to their units to watch. The McCain voters, like Barbara Sims, 79, and her husband Robert Sims Sr., 86, knew it could be a short and sour evening. This would not be another 2000, when the sun came out, breakfast was served and the election firmly entered the Twilight Zone.

The Simses could take only so much. When Ohio was called, Mr. Sims said, “Forget it.” He went to walk the dog.

Reporting was contributed by Yolanne Almanzar, Lisa A. Bacon, Dan Bilefsky, Nick Bunkley, Ana Facio Contreras, Thayer Evans, Steve Friess, C.J. Hughes, Jon Hurdle, Hari Kumar, Christopher Maag, Rachel Pomerance, Joel D. Stonington and Jennifer Seter Wagner.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 5, 2008, on page P11 of the New York edition.

uncensored waves of excitement...

2008-11-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 11:02 AM, kortney ryan ziegler wrote:

10:32 AM kortney: dude. we have a black president!
10:33 AM me: i know i am watching his speech again right now
it is amazing
kortney: its incredible
me: everyone in nyc was celebrating-
kortney: but they banned gay marriage in ca
10:34 AM me: i went to soho and harlem
kortney: yeah here in chicago too---obviously
i didn't go to the rally--too many people
do you think better things will happen here now?
me: yes
i really do
not because of him but because of how people have to change
10:35 AM kortney: me too
me: last night all these straight latino men came up and apologized for being homophobic and how obama had taught them to be more open minded
10:36 AM men where shooting for a female president next
strangers were buying each other drinks
kortney: :-)
me: it is so fucking crazy
kortney: i think we will have a female prez next
definitely
10:37 AM me: for sure
kortney: or a queer one
you're right--people have to change
peoples mind sets have to
he swept the election---it wasn't even close
me: it was a land slide
10:38 AM even white males, even everybody- you should have seen it here
it was bigger than new year's
10:39 AM i think it broken open the new future-
kortney: thats why the world won't end in 2012
me: everyone knows it is not just about him but we all beat the big white big christian beast-
kortney: yeah everyone here was crying and shit
me: it is the first jew vp
kortney: white dudes hugging each other
joe biden is jewish?
wow
i didn't know
10:40 AM all prezzies have been anglo-saxon christians!
me: because it is that dumb church white christian shit and people are done with it
- i know
kortney: hell yeah
kortney: i think people are tired of being sick, having relatives killed or kill innocent people, losing their homes, feeling scared
10:41 AM me: do you know i just went out to get coffee with yuki and all these kids where cheering that they were ready to fight for everyone's rights - chanting it
10:43 AM kortney: :-)
me: in harlem there has been battle after battle between latino and blacks and last night i watched the speech in a barber shop and the blacks and latinos were toasting with champagne
kortney: i think the kids won the election though
all of em are so into the internet
me: saying they vowed not to fight any loner
kortney: i mean youngsters---who can vote
how crazy it must be to be a kid right now and grow up with a black prezident
me: i know
10:44 AM did you see how happy his beautiful girls look
can you imagine the old people who lived in segregation
10:45 AM can you imagine how crazy a leap this is- it is so beautiful
it is the first time i feel like the shit they have always said we are fighting for is real
kortney: i actually felt like, in a way, democracy worked yesterday
i felt good voting
10:46 AM people look at me different on the street now
they have to
our leader looks like me...
me: hahah i am crying it is so amazing
it is true
i feel like i have to bow down to every black person i see
every person i see
10:47 AM that we are all on level ground for the first time
it is weird
i know you may think i am being weird right now and i am sorry if it is unrefined of me but this is so huge
10:48 AM i feel excited for everybody to have a voice that we may have something other than this dictatorship
kortney: no it's amazing
it's fucking amazing
i can't believe after over 450 years
10:49 AM its funny cuz i was watching all the news shows and all these white dudes were stuttering
haha
it's like they wanted it to happen, but now that it actually has, i think they're like..."oh shit!"
me: ha it just has to blow wide open
they chanted for change and now it is coming
10:50 AM what is it like when people look at you?
10:51 AM kortney: iono
just different i think
they have to
me: but people keep smiling right - like a bow
10:52 AM i feel like people are trying to pay respect in the way they look at people of color now - not just black and white
10:53 AM kortney: true
me: i am going to go out in a bit and take more pictures
kortney: i'm in the library. i have to study
me: i am working with liz abzug who is his chief feminist advisor
kortney: btw michigan now has medicinal marijuana laws
awesome
me: what president has chosen a feminist advisor
kortney: i saw gloria steinem on tv today
10:54 AM me: what did she say
kortney: she is excited pretty much
what else could she say, right?
10:55 AM everyone is excited
its like south africa and nelson mandela
me: i know
yes
kortney: anyways
i gotta get going to get that phd, ya know, cuz i could be president one day
hahaha
me: last night was a break in apartheid
you could and should be.
i am your number one fan
always
10:56 AM you are brilliant
all you have ever done is brilliant
i loved seeing you in nyc
i am so proud of your movie, your art, your mind and your soul
kortney: and people all over the world now have to see our country differently
you know how many people are gonna come visit now
10:57 AM me: it's all up from here - we are alive right now for a reason!!
we are alive in this time for a reason.
i say this over and over- it is what keeps me going
10:58 AM kortney: yeah!
me: i love you, may you have many great visitors
may you make films
honey, i have a ton of work too
but i am going out to shoot right now
kortney: may you take awesome photos of this event
me: i think you need to go film
kortney: did you get good ones last night??
me: put it into one of your movies in the tv background
10:59 AM or something
kortney: i want to get a newspaper but they are all gone. it's ok. the internet is still here!
haha yeah huh
me: yeah but i think you should go out
this moment will never come again
take in all the energy you can while it is out on the streets
11:00 AM anyway, good luck with your day however you take it?
kortney: i'm studying
i have papers to grade and class tomorrow
life goes on
11:01 AM although i feel a bit better about being alive today
it feels good
me: just grade them in the corner coffee shop
it is everywhere
kortney: haha yeah
i'm at northwestern law school
11:02 AM i felt i should come here just to be black
hahaha!
me: i love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! take the fuck over
kortney: i love you too!
me: enjoy the ride. no more need to hide your tattoos
11:03 AM kortney: you'd better be getting some fucking dope photos
exactly!
me: i am on the way - mission 90
kortney: and now my film will be even more controversial and popular
thanks obama!
me: now people will appreciate my photos of the protest more - thank you obama
11:04 AM kortney: :-)
me: oxox
sine
shione
shine
i was just spelling wrong because i was rushing
kortney: haha ok
talk to you later
me: there were no hidden messages there. just 3rd time's a charm
11:05 AM ok

Portland: On Thursday the 16th of October, we hope you will join us...Bless and be blessed.

2008-10-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

Hello All: I just flew from New York to Portland for this wonderful night of art and healing.

Please do join us. Let's make this a special evening of healing and love.

All my best,

//layla

Come Join Us this Thursday in PORTLAND, Ore. For beautiful music, art & purpose. All proceeds go to the Jenny Love MS Angel Fund. Thank you. Bless*

2008-10-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sept 25, 2008

Contact: Allison Kramer, Studio 79, (503) 867-1713
Taurmani Fentress, (503) 937-8882

FUNDRAISER AND EVOLUTIONARY ART GATHERS FOR AWARENESS

AND ACTION. CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT: REVOLUTION

BEGINS WITH PERSONAL EVOLUTION.

Portland, Ore.---It is an event and an invitation highlighting the influential and poetic work of photographer Allison Kramer, photographer/activist Layla Love with spoken word artist Climbing PoeTree. In this time of crisis, we attack compliancy and come together, not only to save what freedoms we are now afforded, but also to work to gain back our rights to health, happiness, and community. The event is October 16th, 2008 at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, located at 107 SE Washington St. Portland, Ore.

"Change is the Only Constant" is a culmination of work by various acclaimed artists, working with different mediums towards a common goal. Realizing that at this time in our national and global history, it is imperative to work together for the welfare of our community, rather than to rely on forces outside of this sphere to care take for us, they have come together to illustrate the beauty of our world through the hardships and the joys found in it. This work inspires audiences to become active participants, part of the creation and the outcome. The effects of the evening are further deepened by the dedication of profits to the Jenny Love MS Foundation, a non-for profit working towards a cure for Multiple Sclerosis.

Layla Love works both as an artist and as a muse, using art as a method of treatment. Dystonia, a physically crippling disease has given her a unique outlook on and passion for life. Since childhood, Love has adopted the camera, both as a subject and an artist, as her greatest source of strength and solace. For her life has an undeniable impetus to be lived to the fullest. Reveling with the masses and the esteemed alike, Love's admirers and subjects range from public figures to the more personal next-door neighbors and friends. Her life embodies a fusion between a photojournalistic approach -an activist dedicated to providing a bank of images for the revolutionaries to draw upon- to a woman who is a force of nature, living as an example to artists and her community at large of one who is unafraid to embrace and to exhibit all that life has to offer.

Accomplished photographer Allison Kramer is known for her photo-essayist approach to photography. The intimacy and multi-layered knowledge that this approach allows, is demonstrated in this exhibit of the most intimate, joyful, and fearful moments of Layla Love's journey, shown in all of its beautiful and brutal power. Kramer, through photographs that span years and highlight the most poignant of moments, in an ever-changing environment of hospitals, homes, lovers, and movements, allows us to not just witness, but to share in this most remarkable of lives. Allison Kramer's art is impossible to witness from the outside; it pulls the audience in, creating an event where the line between subject and artist, between audience and participant, is continually challenged and evolving.

Climbing PoeTree, consisting of poets Alixa and Naima, use spoken word to voice their hearts. They are brilliant examples of what we can create and become, when living up to our greatest purpose. Their work combines with their dedication to the creation and execution of hurricane relief efforts, making them an inspiration to anyone who witnesses the moving message brought forth by this dynamic duo. They live by their motto: Art is our weapon, our medicine, our voice, and our vision. Alixa & Naima will bring their skill, their passion and their dedication to social change, enlivening and inspiring the audience.

The scope of this exhibit reflects the various backgrounds and passions of its participants, though the dedication to brave 'over' exposure is a common thread through all demanding that we all strive towards accountability, unable to deny the challenges that we now face. This is art in its truest form, that which touches us and moves us towards that which we know we are capable of becoming. It is a unique and empowering evening, full of art, inspiration, and community.

This exhibit is a one night only event, showing at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, 107 SE Washington St. Portland, Or, 97214 and will begin at 6pm.

All proceeds from the show will go towards the Jenny Love MS Foundation. It is a suggested donation of $10 and there will be a silent auction at the event.

Space provided by Working Artists Network, an organization working towards creating an empowering environment for creative professionals, emerging or established, whose work fuses art, business and social contribution. Working Artists Network is an invaluable resource for those looking to live a life based on creation, participation and change. For more information on Working Artists Network, please visit www.workingartistsonline.com

Artists Websites:

Allison Kramer

Layla Love

Climbing PoeTree

For further information, sponsorship opportunities, and all other inquiries: Please contact

Studio 79, Artist Management Services: Studio 79 or Taurmini Fentress at Studio79: taurmini@gmail.com

I am "for hire" for a limited time only...*

2008-09-09T07:51:00.001-07:00

Portland Bound: To all of you in the Northwest, my favorite region...

2008-09-07T02:55:00.000-07:00

CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT: REVOLUTION BEGINS WITH PERSONAL
EVOLUTION. A FUNDRAISER AND ART GATHERING FOR AWARENESS AND
ACTION.

JOIN US FOR A NIGHT OF ACTION THROUGH ART. A FUNDRAISER FOR MAMMA EARTH & MAMMA LOVE.

OCTOBER 16TH, 2008

ARTISTS: ALLISON KRAMER, LAYLA LOVE & CLIMBING POETREE

This is a time of crisis, when it is necessary to determine if we are on the brink of World War III or the dawning of a new and improved way of life. Ours is a grassroots mission, united in the fight not only to preserve our remaining freedoms, but also to birth a whole new era of consciousness.

Layla has been dedicating the forces of her work into funding the natural healing process of her mother who has Multiple Sclerosis. At the same time, she remains true to her commitment to create a visual-aid bank for other artists, such as Climbing PoeTree and other non-profits who need images for web-sites, grant writing, auctions, articles, and gallery spaces.

Allison Kramer is a documentary photographer who gains a personal level of access into the most intimate and fearful moments of Layla Love's journey. Allison has been a dedicated journalist in this five-year (and running) coverage of Layla's life - in and out of hospitals, homes, and movements. She also has initiated the founding of the Jenny Love MS Angel Fund. Both Allison and Layla believe that through art we can transform the grittiest depths of reality into a meaningful source of inspiration.

Using spoken word to voice their hearts, Climbing PoeTree are brilliant examples of what we can create and become when living up to our greatest purpose. Their dedication to the creation and execution of hurricane relief efforts is an inspiration to anyone who witnesses the moving message brought forth by this dynamic duo. Alixa and Naima of Climbing PoeTree's motto is: Art is our weapon, our medicine, our voice, and our vision. They have spread this message with beauty and grace in nearly thousand shows across the nation, along with international tours.

Alixa and Naima performed during the opening night of Allison and Layla's New York premiere “Representing Women” last summer at the World Culture Open Center in Chelsea. It proved to be an inspirational and moving performance. Last year's exhibit was also the first fundraising event for the Jenny Love MS Angel Fund.

Allison and Layla began working together in London where they met at University and collaborated, on films and photography shows. They have since traveled throughout regions of the Middle East, Australia, Asia, and across the US, and have been featured on news programs, radio, and print media.

It is with great pleasure that we bring the performance, the art, and the intent out West - to the nation's most beautiful region. Now is the time we must come together more than ever. We urge you to celebrate with us, offering what support, press, and perspective you have.

This is not a time to hold back. Now we must leap front and center to create occasions that leave viewers not only visually stimulated and aurally satisfied, but also assist the active audience to find the fire in their own belly. It is a time for all of our stories and all of our testimonials to be voiced.

In an effort to get everyone involved in this project, Climbing PoeTree will provide fabric for audience members to scribe their own prayer, wish, and action, and include it in their ongoing project titled S.T.I.T.C.H.E.D. (Stories, Testimonies, Intentions, Truths, Confessions, Healing, Expressions, and Dreams). It is meant to “Create a future by rewriting our histories.”

Layla and Allison will also be taking pictures of people in the room - not specifically for event coverage but as interactive art. The project evolves as it unfolds - throughout the multidimensional actions within one evening.

Illustrating her experiences with the US healthcare system and the need to change it, Layla will be giving a 45 minute presentation using a story board of photographs and projections of images from her book, “We Are Never the Same Person Twice.”

Allison will be providing the viewers with rich and often challenging images; raw yet classic in nature. The juxtaposition of these two women is not one you might expect to work. It has been a long hard road and there have been fireworks as each tries to achieve their own respective visions. This is our time to celebrate this collaboration with you.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We plan to give all we have to this moment. We are happy to provide any further details, and are open to all suggestions and possibilities.

Bless and be blessed...

I will be displaying images from the movement, adding a gallery show, and contributing to the silent auction. Please join me in this most worthy event

2008-09-06T21:29:00.001-07:00

Please attend this inspiring, fire-fueling, love-filled, art-rich event. If you cannot make it, send your good vibes and celebrate the living angels all around you. So that we may rise in joy and passion to the dawning of an ever brighter day...

*This image is of Liz Abzug and myself by Allision Kramer. The details of the event are posted below...

Hope to see you there.

Best,

//layla

Love in Training: Inspired by Ms. Liz Abzug and the possibility of FREEDOM ON OUR TERMS*

2008-09-04T14:20:00.001-07:00

I was so inspired by the Freedom on Our Terms Convention, made possible thanks to Ms. Liz Abzug. The event commemorates the work of her mother, Bella, and the tens of thousands of women present at the 1977 Houston Convention. The event also continues to bring the wave forward by getting a bunch of new youth ready for the mighty task that stands before us.

In this video you can see the words are raw and unrehearsed, but it is all a matter of just raising our voices, and bringing them together no matter how afraid we might be of the the power and beauty that lie within. Now is the time - today is the moment. Let us all stand together and come close. Preserve the work done by our mothers, maintain the work done by ourselves...and stand for the work that is sure to be done by our daughters.

Please join me in supporting the next wonderful event brought to you by the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute.

BALI First Annual Awards Fundraiser — The Bella Award and Bella-Fella Award

We will hold our first awards fundraiser at the beautiful CITY HALL Restaurant located downtown in TRIBECA at 131 Duane Street (between Church and West Broadway) on Tuesday, September 16th, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.

This year we will honor Erica Forman, Esq. and partner at Bryan Cave LLP as the very first award recipient of the “Bella Award” for her outstanding leadership as Chair of the BALI Board of Directors and someone who was there from the very beginning helping to form and create our organization and Institute.

The first Bella Fella Award will be awarded to one of our very strongest male supporters, Hon. Council Member and Chair of the New York City Council Finance Committee, David Weprin.

Come meet new and old friends of BALI and some “star” leaders, surprise guests and all sorts of fun supporters.

We will offer some great Hors d’oeuvres and wine as well as a cash bar.

The levels of supporters are the following:

TOP HAT - $500.00

FEDORA - $400.00

COWGIRL/COWBOY - $300.00

BERET - $200.00

BEANIE - $150.00

Of course students and moderate income supporters will also be welcome at a much reduced fee.

You can contribute and pay to attend this event by going to the Donate page on our web site and paying by any credit card on PayPal. Or you can reserve a ticket(s) for the event by leaving your name and number on our BALI event event reservation line: 212-346-9699.

Women Against Anti-woman Women

2008-09-04T07:52:00.000-07:00

I was born the year of the Houston Convention where tens of thousands of women and good people gathered for the rights of women.

Freedom on OUR Terms! I have been riding the wave since birth, through its highs and its lows. And now my heart sinks deeper than ever before. Wow! What a terror! I read the front page of a newspaper that claims, "The issue of the glass ceiling is SOLVED!"

With Palin, everything that we have fought so hard for has gone terribly wrong. Misogynist pigs are laughing at us right now - oh, so you want to see a woman in office...well, we won't let you have one who speaks her own mind and fights for the rights of women everywhere, but we will provide you with a shadow of a nightmare wrapped in female form. Those assholes found the most anti-woman woman ever in an effort to bolster patriarchy. I will not accept your offering, Republicans. I not only decline, I refuse to live in a nation run by monsters - male or female.

Any person who hunts, kills, sends their own child into a heartless, unjust war threatens all my rights as a woman. Palin is not a person I want anywhere near the law-making process - let alone at the top where most checks and balances have already been eradicated.

I have the same kind of sickening fear in the pit of my stomach as I did four years ago...and 4 years before that. But now the face of evil is that of a woman who aims to re-flame the cycle of witch-hunting and is willing to wage war on her fellow women's bodies, our choice to love, as well as the separation of church and state that this nation was founded upon.

We must unite as women to say we support and celebrate those with politics that support us.

The sad thing is I really feel that all those white male Republicans - who have said countless sexist remarks about Hillary - are just thinking to themselves, "Look at this dumb blow-up doll of a woman! She is going to bring the big prize home to daddy like a good little girl."

This is truly a time of golden crisis...a time when good peace-loving people, animal rights and human rights activists alike, and even Mother Earth herself is at risk. This will not only have devastating effects upon America but on the entire world, which is already in deep in peril.

I will be praying with all my heart and soul as well as working with every resource I have to counteract this grim possibility.

I have faith in us still. The darkest hour is before the dawn. A new day is possible - not only possible but eminent. We are moving either toward the best moment: the millennial awakening or we are returning to the Dark Ages - and the dawn will belong to another generation.

I am ready for the breaking open of skies and the coming forward of light. I am ready for it now.

United We Stand.

This is my plea: that we all do all we can in this moment to bring forth all of our light.

May the healing and revolution come wide and deep.

I offer my whole life to the fight for women's equality. I live for it and I am willing to die on the frontlines for it. I pray it never comes to that, but I am willing nonetheless. That is how passionately I feel about the goddess within us all, the bearers of life. It is very disheartening for me to see a woman like Palin in a place of power. I feel so deeply hurt and betrayed.

But they will not succeed in their divisive tactics. I will never surrender the rights of my body, of who I choose to love, of equal pay for equal work, for the protection of Mother Earth, for the protection of every living being.

May we all do all we can to help birth the dawning of a new day.

-peace, love and other good things,

//layla

test your voice

2008-09-03T06:31:00.000-07:00

50-city Tour: Join us please - The Women who are changing our world for the better - love to the revolution - all the sweat, tears, joy, and time...

2008-09-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Season Tour

This is a wonderful tour. I have been blessed enough to be involved in photographing, building, and documenting for this monumental vision as it comes to life. We are coming to a city near you. Please join in the moment and in the movement.

*Revolution begins with personal evolution.
*I love every one of these women and the vision therein*

Kisses to the soul...

//layla

Love for Hurricane Season

2008-09-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin will NEVER have my vote.

2008-09-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

My heart almost dropped through my stomach. I was walking around the Lower East Side late night - trying to get some air after working an 18-hour day. My eyes glanced down and there was one paper that read, "The issue of the glass ceiling is solved."

THE GLASS CEILING WILL NOT BE "SOLVED" UNTIL THE PORN INDUSTRY IS DESTROYED, UNTIL WOMEN HAVE EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK, UNTIL RAPE IS A CRIME PUNISHABLE BY DEATH...UNTIL 50 PERCENT OF THE VOICES IN MEDIA, GOVERNMENT, EDUCATION AND COMMERCE BELONG TO WOMEN, UNTIL WE ARE GIVE REPARATION FOR THE HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF ENSLAVEMENT, AND UNTIL WOMEN CAN BE REWARDED FOR MORE THAN JUST THEIR HOT BODIES AND THEIR ABILITY TO CARRY MALE WEAPONS THE WAY THAT SARAH PALIN DOES.

A fishing-hunting-NRA member who goes to bed every night with the oil industry is all I see in this woman.

Just because she is a woman, does not mean she gets one ounce of my respect. No Republican gets respect from me. No one who advocates the killing of innocent animals, people, war mongering, or oil drilling gets my respect. This world is falling apart at the seams thanks to greedy, murdering oil guzzlers. They have no consideration for life beyond the white walls of white America. And just because this KKK member has a cunt and a big smile to hide the devil within, she is not fooling me.

Let us be clear: McCain does not give a fuck about women. When Hillary Clinton - a MUCH more qualified woman was running for office - he avowed to 'beat the bitch.' He is a hell raiser and a fucking piece of shit who wants to destroy any chance this world has of beauty and resurrection.

If you vote for these two, you vote America into the grave.

# If Obama's magnificent DNC speech didn't make you fall even more in love with him, how about checking out McCain's SERIOUS screw up "CBS Edits McCain's Whopper Out of Broadcast" (w/original video) on YouTube. On a more grown-up note, Sarah Palin is grody. McCain's awful running mate is Anti-Gay, Anti-Abortion, Pro-Gun. She loves fur coats, hearts Moose Burgers, and is an Evangelical Christian who believes that Creationism should be taught in schools. She is TOTALLY our cup of tea. (Anyone have a noose so we can hang ourselves if we have to call her our VP?!). Of course nothing is more interesting than Campbell Brown calling her out. This is the MySpace page of the teenage boy who impregnated her daughter. That's an articulate kid!

the first time i turned on the TV in over a year...

2008-08-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

*being roped up by the tube - escaping virtual enslavement- concept my own- images by Allison Kramer.

wow - first of all, let me say: fuck.

i do not have enough time to write as much as i would like to about the last three hours. in fact, i could write volumes on every 30 seconds and what affect it is having on life on earth.

quick observations:

1. DRUGS (prescription or otherwise): should not run at all...let alone in every other commercial - prescriptions, cosmetics, food, and sex - manufactured everything- everything polished and air brushed to the point that many of the commercials use virtual people - these have cartoon cyborg 'sluts' selling raisins - fucking raisins - little shriveled up dried out grapes, which yes are a good source of fiber but so high in sugar. and this cyber chick suggests that maybe eating these grapes will land you a roll in Hollywood or at least a porn - the line is thin enough these days that it barely matters...

And the birth control ads - get rid of the 'curse' using this Christan propaganda. whatever happened to the red tent? what every happened to the sacredness of being a woman? of having the power to create life? to bleed and to nourish the earth? this sacred blood that sheds from my womb - giving me time to rest - to feel all of my emotions - to exercise away cramps- to breathe through it - to learn to love being a woman - to learn to love being an animal - it is the full moon - i will dance all night. i love bleeding during the full moon. it is the most powerful way for me to feel my connection to mother earth. These ads were literally telling women to "beat' mother nature - to trick her - to fill our bodies with artificial hormones that can kill. and then while you are at it why don't you have your chest cut open and fill your beautiful natural breasts with some oversized balls of poison? go on cut yourself wide open - no one minds the blood dripping from your breasts. then put lots of chemicals onto your hair that seep into your brain. then go out and get laid - do it. do it fast - make a splash. everybody wants to be seen - this is voyeurs bullshit. the more polished on the outside - often the less polished on the inside. i want to shine from within.

use, be sexy, healthy, sassy, and fun. but fuck all the beauty bullshit just to be some whore on display - just to be another blow-up doll. fuck that - celebrity/reality/America's worst strongest load of shit yet. and more than half the world is dying.

mean while real love is being lost and found.
mean while there are ways - so many ways - for you to be happy without any pills
mean while we can wake-up and tell them to fuck off
mean while we should be reclaiming our bodies and our sanity.

I will not put anything into my body that has chemicals added to it - or onto my body - same thing because the skin breathes.

I will not buy things that are not fair trade and organic. I will not have 50 pairs of shoes and a million and one little bits and pieces cluttering up my life.

I will not use paper that is not recycled.

Ah but all of these good things cost extra - I realize. and right now I AM ACTUALLY HOMELESS - roaming- trying to find the right ways to build this personal revolution without slipping into the thousands of temptations that stand in my path - some of them more tempting that others...but the vices are everywhere. It is near impossible to find integrity in these times...any sense of loyalty and understanding - loyalty beyond sex and money.

Understand that we have a value that is much greater.

much much greater and more beautiful than anything glowing off that screen - I promise.

-------------------------------------ok--------------------------------------------

I did not even make it past observation number one about the world's favorite little pacifier.

Now I must stop this and find some honorable ways to make the money I need to make room for a voice without sponsorship - a voice that is my own. Right and wrong do not exist - just ideas - and I am driven to share mine.

Happy Saturday Morning. I was in bed at midnight on a Friday in New York City - pretty good - not a single drink. I barely drink anymore. feels better. then I wake-up naturally with the sun only to see the nightmare created by these glowing little monsters that seem to be invited into almost every home - so crazy to me.

THROWING AWAY THE TV WAS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

//not that some movies/docs/media is not also wonderful, great, and enlightening- but unless you have a willpower of steel and refuse to even flutter past all the junk in between, I suggest throw the life sucker out the window. Or better yet, have it disposed of properly. these things are full of lead and poison that is going to be killing the earth and life on earth for even longer than your eyes can stay glued.

she has won my heart, mind, and soul

2008-08-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

this fierce and beautiful woman found me sad and shaking in a back alley. she has brought me back to life and given me hope in the good of people, the realness, that purity I was searching for in a world of so much glitter...but all that glitters is not gold...I have found through trial and error. but this woman, this creator, has brought me back to a place of hope. it feels nice to believe in someone so deeply.

love is possible.
realness still exists.

there is hope for us all
to shine.

to breath deep, to make the commitment to take it deep, and then deeper, to really plant and sow, honor and understand.

I feel so lucky to be growing the garden of life with this wonder, this shining star*

thank you,
thank you,
a million times.

bless and be blessed.

//layla

celebrating the life of a snow-queen-punk-angel who has all of my heart*

2008-08-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

*she has an aliveness that I celebrate, a beauty that heals, an openness that leaves me in awe. She is soft and as individualistic as a snow flake yet as sharp as a sword. She has my heart open and my armor down. I celebrate her being alive and the privilege of being part of her life.

happy birthday ms. queen bee. happy birthday wonderful goddess. let the magic spin within you until it lifts us out of here like a big harvest moon, orange and warm.

the world is ours to play in. ours to love in. ours to care about and incite revolution for. ours to disappear from into the open waves. sail away with me. let us search out the paradise within.

like always and like never before.

i will meet you under the mango tree.

all my love.

//layla

i agree toughen-up ---open-up*

2008-05-07T15:17:00.001-07:00

White People, Get Over Yourselves from Dantrification on Vimeo.

donna: behind every strong woman there is another strong woman

2008-02-20T02:36:00.000-08:00

My wolf-eyed queen. I remember seeing you for the first time, walking down the halls of that great British monastery in your Italian leather thigh-high boots. I remember women's studies class became like a holiday in which we would raise our hands faithfully like good old patriots raise the flag. Breaking into offices to do more work at 4am when the library had closed. Laughing at almost everyone all the time and loving it. Ah, ten years ago — ah, now 12 years ago. Shelves have landed on my head. You almost scared my Californian lover to death with your earthquake-causing romps. I have been pregnant with your love-child, been married to you. You put me on the New York VIP list, and ever since I have been in love with the wit, the charms, the brains, the unpolished perfection of laughter gone wild, lived free and open...

Let's do it all together. Yeah, let's do it all imperfectly.

To the queen of love letters and the details of words, the secrets of my depths are entrusted to you, my love.

For editorial services including copyediting, proofreading, and production, please contact: Donna Capato

2008-02-20T02:05:00.000-08:00

It's 5am. I just got off the phone with one of the world's most famous beauties. She is stunning, really — one of those people who looks as enchanting at 2am with smeared eyeliner and boxers as they do on the silver screen and glossy magazine covers. Ah, the fiction of it all, the fantasy wrapped-up in the empty calories of strangers' sperm. How much we swallow in one lifetime. Me, drinking from the sweet rivers of a woman's nectar. How intoxicating is the taste of the creator, her soft, warm, hard, woman flesh, her woman's intuition, her soul in a swirl underneath the flesh and bones. There is so much more underneath the flesh and bones, between the flesh and bones. We roll around together and talk of being queens, of having lost our power and how to regain it or having more power than we know how to handle, sharpening ourselves into the rising. I have to become harder, she softer — we balance out each other with wolves' eyes.

Emotions are not limited to the rich or the poor, to the spiritual or the logical — the conscience does not fit within the science — the way that we feel inside rarely reflects the outside. I think we can have it all. Let's try. Ok, now. Let's go to sleep first. I love you. I love you, too.

if you think there is anything missing, it is an illusion...

2008-02-19T22:43:00.000-08:00

I listen to songs on repeat. I find something I love and I play it over and over. Each conversation, each breath, and each glance. Each only happens once. I cry from the joy and the sadness of letting go and of holding on. The girl with no roots, no national boundaries to tie her...family scattered to the wind. She misses her past lives where mama and papa lived in the same village and sisters were on-hand to play, to imagine, to create. She dreams of a time when her best friend returns from Iraq. She watches her love grow with each day circling around lovers as different as the sky and the sea. She is the horizon where they meet — meeting never in more than the conversations she brings them into.

What world is this? Modern plagues of isolation behind these screens. Empty. Distant. The glow replacing the light. She is able to detach from it all she says — disappearing into another haze — pushing away clarity cause the picture may just be too scary - too powerful and/or too scary.

She has given up almost everything to create art — with the hope of sharing it — in hope of returning the energy that all her heroes have given her throughout the years. She has ripened and rotted several times; seasons pass and she matures into her role. But what is that role?

"Standing just outside the circle of light is where you've been living your whole life...you got to step back into the corners of the room where it's really black and launch your attack." Ani sings to her for the thousandth time and this time she swears she is almost there. Slow is beautiful she reminds herself of that when everything in the modern world tells her that anything short of mass production and lightening speed is falling short. She rushes ahead like everyone else, but not really. She skips those five shots of expresso that keep her New York peers running. Forget the cocaine; give me a joint on a lazy Sunday morning in bed with someone who blows my mind before they've even said a word.

It is hard to see society have its way with her. She worries about all the superficial things — her teeth aren't white enough, her body is not thin enough, her skin is not flawless. When will she feel safe, know there is money in the bank, know there is someone to come home to, a job to leave to...

On Valentine's Day she has a gallery opening that looks beautiful and costs her more than it should for the six people that stopped by. The culture and the men around seem to want more than her art. They break her plasma screen and offer her a t-shirt that says "pornothug" as compensation.

It is Valentine's Day and infection fights in her kidneys. The woman she wants to marry is having her one-year anniversary with another woman and the one man she could spend 'forever' with is holding his new baby girl, less than one day old. She comes home cold and alone, she forgot her jacket. She throws-up in the dark over a cold generic toilet bowl. Shaking, she peels off her clothes in a lethargic motion, crawls into bed like a wounded animal, and cries until her eyes are swollen shut and sleep somehow finds her. She wakes up to the tears. A crazy-deep kind of sad...the kind where the tears wake you before the sun does.

She curses emotions and the way we all seem so addicted to each other and how pathetic it is — all these crappy, sad love songs — love's not like it used to be she thinks. Just like artists used to work on songs until they were masterpieces of rock in rock, of rhythm and blues. Now everyone just samples, little pieces of 10 old songs must make a good new one, right? We can sing about being rich or poor, black or white — we can sing a few lines to feed our egos on top of whatever mix they bring us. Just like the cultural phenomenon of piecing 10 different people's attributes together to create the perfect balance of everything we 'need.' I mean, you just can't get it all from one place can you? And you have to have it all, right? I mean, why wouldn't we have it all? When we can. While we can. Maybe because it is like thinking we can just have another plastic bag until we hear shocking truths like there are collections of plastic bags in the ocean that come together in the currents to form masses larger than the United States — and three is more than one, anyhow. Just like those dating reality shows. It amazes me that there is even one, let alone many. The carelessness.

I look at all the fat people, all the little women stuffing themselves with diet pills, the men with steroids. Or we take hormones to change our respective sex. We cut holes in our chests and fill them up with rubber tits.

I shake my head at how sick it all is and then catch myself looking in the skyscraper's reflection glancing along the street to the 'prettiest' girl. I think, "how can you ever find love that lasts until you look like this?" The truth is she knows better. She knows supermodels feel more alone than she does. If you think there is anything missing, it is an illusion. She breathes deep and the love of the universe pours over her. She knows self-love, she knows she knows it. She holds herself close and with so much tenderness. She eats rose petals and blackberries with wamm tea and munuca honey.

She wonders if we are all as super-saturated in lovers as we are in body mass? She walks by bars in the cold shuffle-by and catches glances of hands on asses, cleavage everywhere, men hoping to score another point. Dating becomes as meaningful as video games, becomes as surreal as the real killings we watch play-out on the evening news or each time a women gets fucked in a porn. And the distance between the soul and the body widens with every shady story, with every genetic wish your girl was as hot as me on the dance floor. He tunes-in with a little bitch slappin' rhyme and it's all in good fun.

Work is so stressful, we are all so sad and lonely, insecure, we need to go out and fuck and be fucked. Ah, old romantic living during the fall of Rome — the sequel.

The idea of having one partner to share the whole story with excites her more than anything else she can imagine. She wants that old-fashioned bond, that union. She has set aside the idea of having children of her own so that she may birth herself during this lifetime. This is the first time in centuries that she has had a chance just to raise herself. The idea propels her forward. How amazing it would be to put all that diaper-changing energy into birthing a revolution, in preparing for 2012, for living in the forest, for being primal and wild, for being never tied-down to anyone, tasting every person like the rare and exotic fruit that they are. I have loved. I have had more love, so much more love than I could have expected, hoped for — I have never screamed for love. I don't ever go out to seek love. I am alone until it finds me. I work all the time, Friday nights, Saturdays. I feel like I never get anything done. I do...just slower than I would like to. I miss structure, guidance, company, a place to go other than the living room.

I should have a huge space that I can turn into a center of creation, inspiration, movement. I want a publishing company. I want a media center. I have twenty books inside my mind and this computer - one on the environment, another on mothers, fathers, war, sex, abstraction, primal nature, poetry, uniting in diversity, the meaninglessness of it all and the meaning therein, the hopelessness and the hope therein, the meaning that is actually meaningless, and the type of hope that breeds hopelessness and the distinction therein.

It has been a hard week for my family. One sister calls me crying from small-town England because she can't find a minimum wage job and she is brilliant. The other calls crying from the Middle East cause she is locked in a royal palace — she is the bird in the golden cage and she is brilliant. My mom cries because I am not with her now, and I really fucking wish I were.

So frustrating to be born poor and have to climb so far just to reach a place where no one has anything to say. How often do you speak with an automated response? How deeply ingrained are our programmed responses? I know, the eternal optimist in me knows we all have something precious and rare to say. So I wish we would burn the fat and cut the small talk or even the big talk and just share sound and glances, share eyes and stories, universal and personal.

Two amazing women came over tonight. Beacons of light, beautiful, living heroes. Such a blessing to have them in my home, and yet, I see that I am only half there — closed. We talk about furniture instead of sharing the cool story about how I found two of the same bamboo rocking chairs on two different streets in the same week and now they are sitting in them like a perfect set. Instead, I just say the furniture belongs to my roommate who is never home. They ask me if I am in pain, and I say "yes" and answer a few questions about CAT scans and other tests when really I want to say that it is my heart that hurts the most, that I feel heartbroken from not waking up to look at the same curve of a back and intertwined fingers everyday, that I miss having the partnership that I see in them, that I miss living in a big group house with so many great friends making so much art, sharing so many hugs. Why did you all have to die and disappear? She needs to be held; these beautiful women hold her flesh but she is trapped inside like they say her birds are trapped inside of her. How am I meant to take flight with them?

She is an angel ready to raise hell. Sick of all these Biblical references — looking instead to the warrior goddess who was born of no one's sacred story but her own.

Hope you can join me at my lovers' day gallery show — February 14th...

2008-02-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

Art is an Aphrodisiac
Copulating Creatures
Step into the love tunnel
Art lasts longer...
A Valentine's Day Gallery Show:
Cheap Prints and A Collector's Wet Dream...
Photographs by *layla love
(curated by Michael Richardo Andreev)
Thursday, February 14th
7-10pm
Sapphire Lounge
249 Eldridge Street (btwn Houston and Stanton)
212.777.5153

Every inch of wall will be covered with beautiful erotica.
And in the main bar area: Get your Lovers' Day Portraits taken for FREE. You have the chance to be featured in an upcoming show and on: http://www.nyc-artparty.com
**Photographers Layla Love and Becky Yee have professional lighting, glowing backdrops, and great talent — now, all we need is your face. Enjoy the passion of the moment, immortalize yourself in ART, bring a friend, bring a someone you love, bring someone you play with, bring your self-love*
Add a little shoot before or after...
*In the spirit of art as passion, I am scheduling private photo sessions: a great way to explore the love of another, a great gift, a beautiful activity to bring to your day. Self-love shoots available and encouraged.
To RSVP, inquire further: layla@lovephotography.org
www.lovephotography.org
917.687.0435

2008-02-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

It is afternoon. I am sitting on my bed in a small 10x10 room in Brooklyn. I like that it is square. Everything else in my life is asymmetrical and everything about me is round.

The walls are white. On the wall across from my bed, I have my quote from the Times Square billboard I ran during the summer. The rest of the walls are bare. I have a single window in front of me. A stick from a tree from home holds up a cream and brown forest — urban silhouettes of nature to hide the white paint peeling off the brick wall. I could almost jump into my neighbor's living room and introduce myself. I think I would like to. I would like to be a cat woman. I would like to have super powers right now: the power to take the quantum leap from barely surviving to actively thriving.

I need to be out there. I need to publish books and open centers. I need to document, to travel. I need to train my body to become a boxer. I need to drink more water. I need to lose more weight. I have to gain more control. I need to lose more tension. I need to gain more power. I need to lose this debt and I need to gain material wealth. I need to lose procrastination. I need to gain a Zen perspective on the power of "now." I need to lose self-help books and finish my own.

In the hospital, throwing-up, feeling anything but sexy. Contemplating the flux of human relations in this post-modern era where anything goes and often things are gone after a single night or one round. And what has holding power against the modern machine of the dating frenzy amplified by the Valentine's Day plug-in and match-up. Become a whore hobbyist - become something, something you are not now and do it fast — fuck — once you have those wrinkles, you are a dime a dozen in the used-up and thrown away women pile. No, ladies, we don't appreciate with age in this world. So if you want to assure your place in the golden age — to have any value as a woman — you better publish now — put something on paper — make it official - you have a brain — your body — ah, they say you have some something...some look that lures but you are far from refined — action before glamour, you say, and so it has been.

Yet now I am looking for healing — I am looking to rage against the machine — I want to be strong, to run up mountains and on beaches. I need to rise to the next level of my own potential here in my private hell on a Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn. How many other artists are sitting alone in front of their computers planning how to save the world, how to find themselves, how to make Saturday night worth the rest of the week, just how to keep on living. The under-privileged is what I call us. The bohemian dreamers who have risen above the status quo but not quite above the poverty-line (or maybe a step or two ahead or behind that mark) but still starving for the ability to actualize their potential by any means necessary. Then there are all those others.

I head into the city today to go to Callen-Lorde, the only health center for the sexually versatile within this oh so diverse city. I have been dealing with the blue collard bastards at Beth Israel all week. Dealing with their constant drug pushing and Court TV in the waiting room — how the fuck do you tell someone that they are dying and then send them out to a waiting room where they are forced to watch their fellow citizens duke it out on national television for a month's rent and a VCR. Stupid western doctors and their endless bag of tricks. There is little treatment left in the American system — treating means going to the root and uplifting the problem...healing the wound from the inside out. Not here. Here we just get offered a lifetime supply of drugs to numb the pain and details of how we can get laser surgery to cover-up our scars. Forget about even having a little old-fashioned rubbing alcohol to clean the cuts. No no...no room for bleeding hearts or commonsense here — the inside of American hospitals remind me of the commercials they show at half-time during the Super Bowl. Bring the best and worst of technology together, watching humans promote machines, watching us sing along to jingles for the latest fix. We are going to give you a stomach cocktail they tell me Friday night in the ER. I ask what is in it. The doctor replies, "It is just a cocktail; it covers everything, coating everything." I shake my head and say, "no thanks." I have to say "no" politely three times and she walks away with out asking why or offering any further details — she offered it to me — it's on record she and has covered her bases. I am released into the world of follow-up appointments.

Big things come in small packages. Women raise your voices and your hands...in peace symbols and fists*

2008-02-05T05:03:00.000-08:00

...If you need to be inspired, look no further. May we all join the path of the righteous. We are all leaders; we just need to actualize this great potential behind our breath.

gloria steinem: the ends are the means*

2008-02-04T22:50:00.001-08:00

sorry for the camera shaking — not my doing, but the message is still worth celebrating.

you have the right not to remain silent*

2008-02-04T22:21:00.001-08:00

This is an interview I did for Feminist Majority radio when I was still debating my vote. I have decided clearly that Hillary is the best choice for us as a nation. Without the voice of half of this nation's people we simply cannot have a democracy. The hatred towards women during this election has been shocking and painful. I am voting for Hillary not because she is a woman but because I am a WOMAN. I am tired of being silenced. I am tired of us not even realizing how much more power is ours to be held. I feel that the Earth needs balance and this is one necessary step among millions. Please join me tomorrow at the polls...

In love and liberation and with respect for the importance of all the players in this race.

Women, good people rising: rise some more.

"The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of women, the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source." —Lucretia Mott

The Most Important Article to READ before going to the polls: Goodbye To All That (#2) by Robin Morgan

2008-02-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Voters,

Before you cast your ballot, please take a moment to read the most thought-provoking of all articles I have read regarding this election.

February 2, 2008

“Goodbye To All That” was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women (for an online version, see http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).

During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women’s movements, I’ve avoided writing another specific “Goodbye . . .” But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities — joint conscience-keepers of this country — been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.

Goodbye to the double standard . . .

—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who’s emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.

—She’s “ambitious” but he shows “fire in the belly.” (Ever had labor pains?)

—When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at BO, it would’ve inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.

—Young political Kennedys — Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.— all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort “See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.” (Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)

Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .

Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.

Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged — and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.

Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.

Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage — as citizens, voters, Americans?

Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .

The women’s movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments (www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC’s Tim Russert’s continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN’s Tony Harris chuckling at “the chromosome thing” while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And that’s not even mentioning Fox News.

Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white . . .

Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages — not only African American and European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab American and — hey, every group, because a group wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t given birth to it. A few non-racist countries may exist — but sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways a woman breaks free from other discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world still so patriarchal that it’s the “norm.”

So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?

Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites — especially wealthy ones — adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were black or he were female we wouldn’t be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn’t stand a chance — even if she shared Condi Rice’s Bush-defending politics.

I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote — until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they’re being called “race traitors.”

So goodbye to conversations about this nation’s deepest scar — slavery — which fail to acknowledge that labor - and sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.

Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men — though not all the same as one another — and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this high office and barely got past the gate — they showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women’s rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)

Goodbye, goodbye to . . .

—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys — though unlike them, he got reported on). Let’s get real. If he hadn’t campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.

—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it’s “cooler” to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.

—the notion that it’s fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.

Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts “entitled” when she’s worked intensely at everything she’s done — including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.

Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.

Goodbye to the phrase “polarizing figure” to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women’s movement that quipped, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” She heard us, and she has.

Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn’t as “likeable” as they’ve been warned they must be, or because she didn’t leave him, couldn’t “control” him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn’t bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She’s running to be president of the United States.

Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries’ history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power — granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our “land of opportunity,” it’s mostly the first pathway “in” permitted to women: Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.

Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .

Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous “Obama Girl” flaunting her bikini-clad ass online — then confessing Oh yeah it wasn’t her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said “made me feel like a dork.”

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands — if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”

I’d rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart men — of all ethnicities and any age — who get that it’s in their self-interest, too. She’s better qualified. (D’uh.) She’s a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on. (Also, yes, dammit, let’s hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)

I’d rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how — and he’ll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he’s an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who’ve worked with the Kennedys’ own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it’s only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn’t it about getting the policies we want enacted?

And goodbye to the ageism . . .

How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse U.S. youth from torpor it’s useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country’s history: the boomer generation — the majority of which is female?

Old woman are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age — and we are the generation of radicals who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we’re back!

We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more nurturing parents; who created women’s studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.

We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S. voters.

Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There’s not a woman alive who, if she’s honest, doesn’t recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media’s obsession with everything Bill.

So listen to her voice:

“For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

“Women’s rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard.”

That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full, stunning speech).

And this voice, age 22, in “Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969.”

“We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.”

She ended with the commitment “to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible.”

And for decades, she’s been learning how.

So goodbye to Hillary’s second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves?

“Our President, Ourselves!”

Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy — as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly “uniter” with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s — and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first U.S. woman president, but as a great U.S. president.

As for the “woman thing”?

Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman — but because I am.

VOTE HILLARY: For Bold New Leadership and a Stronger America!!
This piece was created by Becky Reagan before Hillary announced her run. All over the world there are men leading business and country — men of all colors — but women are almost erased from the picture when it comes to making it to the top — only seven living women worldwide. Without the balance of women's authentic voices being brought into the game, there will never be a true victory and our nation will remain lopsided and half-assed.

Preamble vocals by Bora Yoon.

www.borayoon.com

I wonder if the sun debates dawn some mornings. Not wanting to rise out of bed...? Climbing PoeTree reflects the sweet intoxication of possibility*

2008-02-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

These are the most amazing and talented channels of the Great Goddess. It is an honor and privilege to work with them, to know them. I will be joining them on their 56-city tour this coming fall to complete a full-length book capturing the visual glory of these environmental protectors, these angels of change.

so many blessings, so blessed*

killing is only one way to make the news

2008-02-04T20:29:00.001-08:00

Full broadcast coming soon. How many people can we be if we open ourselves up to the full array of characters inside this flesh and bone? I carry so many identities, all real, all part of me, often competing for center-stage...I am torn. However, I rejoice in being open to learning, to beauty in all of its forms, for the best in all of us — whoever we may be. I break from too many choices. I have laid in a million pieces but I have never been broken. World I bring forth upon you my excitement: to balance: to being consistently inconsistent. Sometimes meditating, sometimes making love, sometimes deep in social action, sometimes primal. Deepening towards our roots, kissing the top soil of Mother Earth. The means are the ends.

This is one segment of several news broadcasts that we practiced public-speaking — so much sharpening to do along the way. So many ways to explore our tools of communication and using media for laughter and for community. I have been working on creating two books — one of my own and one by Allision Kramer, who has been photographing the highs and lows of my existence for years now. Chad Meador is a make-it-happen kind of man so when we traveled down to West Virginia for the shoot he had news teams on stand-by.
I think playing in the media is fun and it needs to be done more. I plan on sharing my voice before and after I am ready. I am still shaky and raw — never been more ready...*

Dancing at Cosom with Allyson and Alex Grey Vs, the emergancy room...

2008-02-04T19:13:00.000-08:00

I have a deep respect and admiration for the work of Allyson and Alex in creating such an alive, dynamic art center where the creator is present in every inch of creation. The way that this couple has forged a working relationship between our spiritual and physical elements — giving us room to not only observe but to participate - is astounding. I have seen Alex's work all around the world. People become somewhat fanatical — setting up booths in London markets just to showcase these energy-based images, kids in Japan crying out that they have seen the first sign of God. When strangers are making statements like that you know curiosity must be satiated. Come join me at a full-moon party and let yourself reconnect with the ebb and flow that we are inescapably woven within. All the big city lights can't out flood the natural rhythm of eternity.

So last Friday was the members party in Chelsea and I was so excited to go. Instead, I found myself in an ambulance on the way to the hospital for a night of tubes, needles, and plenty of morphine. I should have been listening to Jodie Holland. I think I was in my head. Got some interesting pictures and a myriad of follow-ups, but really I just need natural healing. I need a break. I need company, I need back-up, yes, I need to be inspired. I am inspired everyday. I am an eternal optimist. I am looking to heal. If my body is a temple, I have been desecrating it. Transformation is more than possible; it is our birth-right. I no longer want to be dying from a lack of means. I have meaning aplenty. Ready to share. Ready to thrive in rebirth. Screaming out the rage, breathing in the fire. Pain makes pretty patterns in the end. I am like a forest that has been burned to ashes. Feeling the tragedy, I tear out rivers that soak the now fertile ground. Now I can open. Come play in my secret garden.

...discover that when you put the psyche in motion, it heals itself

2008-01-23T11:02:00.000-08:00

5Rhythms are wherever Gabrielle stands. Its center is in New York City, and its limbs continue to spread their reach.

Wherever the 5Rhythms are practiced a community is born to dance, to sweat, to change, to support. 5Rhythms communities are flourishing from Croatia to Korea, from Maui to Manhattan, from Toronto to Tel Aviv.
www.gabrielleroth.com

Much of my personal healing has come through dance, shrugging off the layers of frozen pain and flowing with the rivers of wild abandonment. I would go as far as to say that health is wealth, and without a body you feel comfortable in, the soul is never at ease, and the mind is never at rest. Heal through movement. If I can start anyone can start. Unable to use my body fluidly for so many years, I have a long way to go, but by the end of this year, I will be a physically strong, flexible, leaping person. Join me Tuesday nights at: www.alexgrey.com

And we will sweat sweet rivers of toxic waste into the pure essence of what it is in us that always keeps us moving forward, despite our stubborn natures.

The Challenge: How do we gain the world without losing our souls?

2008-01-21T20:39:00.000-08:00

Most of us are humble and brilliant. When I take the time to speak with anybody openly, I find treasures of greatness all around.

Not all of us are monumental sexist-racist-dictators-of-evil like Mr. Bush...

I hate our system in which the most destructive among us rise to the top. Bring back the round table.

The United States of America: The Great Melting Pot: The land where anything is possible...

It needs to be possible for us to have a government in this country that looks similar to the mix we see when surveying a table at the United Nations.

One black candidate, one woman — it is a start, but only a start.

I want to live in an America where women and men - Asian, Latin, Eastern European, Jewish, Arab, African, Indian, Native American, Peruvians - of a wide range in age and experience come together and offer forth the true story of a country so large and so complex. I want to see cabinets and Congress reflect the true diversity of this country.

How can we live up to our potential as a nation when we are living by the laws and ideals of so many boring old white men?

It is not just enough to bring in some different shades and a few women in power suits — the winners of the 'race' are always the individuals who most closely mirror and shadow the ideals of the dominate force.

I am so tired of the bi-partisan monotone.
Let's hear the voice of America — let me hear you sing.
It's time to make the tune catchy enough that it spreads like wildfire and it is time for the possibility to be set into motion...the kinetic energy would be enough to blast us with bombs of reason and sensibility.

We have everything we need. Let's build the infrastructure, let's stop being submissive to the corporate machine. Come on, take the whip in hand and beat some hide raw.

I say it is time to throw the corporate big-boys into the corner for a nice long time-out.

Let us take the chance and make the chance to build businesses that service the community and that are formed with the mission that a better world is possible and that each and everything that we do adds or detracts from that mission.

It is time to take back personal responsibly and live up to our personal potential — this is the only way to make way.

I refuse to continue to be pulled under by the tides of a capitalist society that is only benefiting the top 1%...The top 5% are living large. There is still a trace of a middle class, but if you travel across America you will hear more stories of hardship and struggle than of flourish and triumph.

The majority is not only lacking financial success, but is also facing spiritual emptiness, families are by and large shipwrecked; health is failing as we almost all have some ailment.

Creditors are prowling. The average American is in debt double their annual income. We, as a nation, went from having the largest surplus in the world to the largest national deficit in the world in less than a decade. The average family income in this nation has actually dropped over $1000 annually in the last six years while the cost of living has risen astronomically and government-funded programs have been cut more extensively than ever before.

We are exhausted and running as fast as we can and still most of us fall farther behind as our position in the world sinks lower and lower with each passing day. Suicidal thoughts abound, and 60,000 people follow through on that impulse per year (That is double the homicide rate — we are murdering ourselves in droves. Something is terribly wrong — a bi-polar hopeless nation will play off prejudices until we implode.)

Racism flourishes (until we are able as a people to critique our potential leaders based on the content of their character rather than their outward appearance, we have more work to do to free our socially constructed limitations of each other.) Fear is thriving like never before - we use color codes for everything. We shake our heads in the most patronizing ways - at the gangs in LA...the Bloods and the Crypts. We call them 'niggers'. We blame it on that animal instinct, that urban jungle; we put it on the news every night only to condition us to see why killing those 'sand-niggers' in a desert hell is justifiable. News anchors speak about the red and the blue states, and the Red Alert, as if there is any difference? Some political refined 'experts' sit in a glowing box and masturbate with propaganda on "60 Minutes." I think to myself, "How terribly wrong this has all gone." I still hear the cheers for America and so many young beautiful Americans are in Iraq dying in vain, dying from the greed of a few and a lack of mobilization by the masses.

We have the power to overturn our government. It is built into the foundation of this great nation. And yet, they have us on this frantic chase to the top — some heaven where everyone is rich and pretty with big fake boobs and abs of steel where all they do is fuck all day long to the next radio hit and play it cool.

More people are involved in lawsuits than are involved in community life...

This is not the America I know is possible. We are living in our own shadow. Light the flames and turn on the heat. Let's fuel the fire in our bellies and learn to demand more of ourselves, more of the world around us.

I think a Native American should really be holding office. I think we need to remember how much blood of the sacred and the holy was spilled upon this land before Europeans planted their crops. We need to remember beyond the hypocrisy of 'Thanks Giving': All the buffalo that died, the children, the chiefs, the medicine men, the wise women, the healers, the virgins, the old ladies with little wrinkled hands - they all lost their lives so that we could be here now. Where is our respect, our conscience, our ability to look back and then forward?

Thank thank thank you to those who are trying, and to those of us joining hands, hearts, and forces.

With gratitude, I remind myself that sharing the little things each and every day it makes us who we are.

We may not have the time or the energy to act as superheroes but there is a possibility everyday to become a little more aware. There is someone within reach of you now who has something to share, and something you need to give or receive is just around the corner.

I will not support this insanity. I will, however, work.
Never in vain.
Every little step.
It is a collection of moments bringing us farther.
It is the way you take breath in — how deep you let it go...*

"Our breath is recycled from someone else's lungs, our enemies are the very air in disguise...you know I fight fire with words, words are hotter than flames, words are wetter than water." -Ani Difranco

Sweet dreams,
Even sweeter waking life.

//layla

Heath Ledger's death today is the perfect example of the empty promise. Let us throw the pills down the drain and wash clean...

2008-01-21T20:27:00.001-08:00

I am in training. I held the mic and spoke during the closing remarks at the Freedom on Our Terms Convention, which honored and continues the work that began in Houston thirty years ago. On this day, and each day since, I have been so inspired that I let the words leak from my mouth. They are not my words and I lay no claim to them. They are universal ideas and dreams pouring through my lips. I promise to continue to sharpen and to share until my last breath...in love and with honor.

Peace is not only possible, it is necessary for the preservation of an Earth that can sustain life and the treasure chest therein.

today?

2008-01-21T20:15:00.001-08:00

This is the golden crisis. This is the time when we as a nation, as individuals, as members of a global community, within our personal tribes, must rise to the occasion by facing the blood that stains our hands with each day that passes in which we do nothing. I call on myself to act. Dissent is patriotic.

Vietnam War through The Things They Carried

2008-01-21T19:46:00.001-08:00

I have two best friends in Iraq today - one is a civilian and one is a militia man. I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT WAR IS ANYTHING BUT THE DUMBEST LACK OF SOLUTION. TODAY THE REAL TEST OF POWER IS NOT WHO CAN MAKE WAR BUT WHO CAN PREVENT IT. I PRAY FOR ALL THE SOULS TRAPPED IN WAR...may we find our way before we all hold hands and jump over the edge of no return.

Good people of the Earth: we face the gravest responsibility. I accept the challenge, although I would rather be playing in the ocean. We must live better, do better, think, feel, and act more often. The surrender only seems to lull us for so long, but then reality hits and no one knows what to do....

STOP> STOP> PLEASE FUCKING STOP>

Start something new. There is a new storyline waiting to be told. There is truth in all of us...we have the power and the ability to mold the world.

Shape up.

To the beauty of sculptures. I cultivate beauty. I fight only because I have to. I work toward the possibility that one day I will have freedom at hand and I can sink into a deep relaxation. But for now, we are still in Vietnam. The tragedy is now. History only repeats itself until we bring forth something not yet lived, making the unimaginable the status quo.

I pray and I work for an ability to live beyond race, sex, battlefields and guts, and rich-folk-bullshit lies. There are people dying everyday...so many, and for who and for what exactly? And you, reading this: Who are you? And what do you think we can do to make this world better? Tell me. Still, I'd rather you show me...

I will show you what I can share, too.

love and liberation.

//layla

Martin Luther King: There comes a time when silence is betrayal* pressed by the demands of inner truth...

2008-01-21T19:12:00.001-08:00

Would you die for your country? Like this solider of peace, this warrior of universal truths.
Shot down by the trigger of fear.
I am not afraid to give my life for my country.
I live and will die hopefully for the promised land, and if not, I will die along the way with a loud speaker and a camera in my hand...on the path, exposing the truths of my life, holding big neon signs that say, "Over here, flow with me, the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked."

Join me on the path...I join my ancestors in a radical revolution against sexism, racism, and militarism.

I give all my love and respect to Dr. Martin Luther King, to his soul and to the possibility within us all. We will not be ideal political play things. Stand-up. Wake-up. United we stand, divided we fall. The truth has always been in the seed of this nation. It is time we grow into our declaration.

Do not remain silent. Do not remain violent. Do not get sucked so far into the rat race that your soul can no longer pause to cry.

Good people of the Earth rise some more.

Revolution begins with personal evolution.

A moral revolution: No more money to the military. We have a nation to heal, a world to relieve, to recapture the spirit of possibility and our loyalty needs to lay with unseen truths. Just because it has not happened thus far does not mean it won't. We have been waiting, growing thicker skin. I am in training. I love this country's ideals with the same passionate desire to see mass transformation, as was generated by Dr. King.

I bow down in honor and in awe...and I feel you. I cry every time I hear his words and I have listened to them more than a hundred times. I will never stop listening.

We must open our hearts, ears, minds, and actions. I call on every woman and man to take a stand on the the war upon us in this country...poor with paradigmatic, being pinned against each other. You will not be my enemy. I will be there. Where are all the women's voices? There is more to be heard. God willing, I will share these sentiments until I am old and gray.

Spiritual awakening, free at last, free at last, thank God and Goddess Almighty we are free at last.

*racism is a weapon of mass destruction.

To my beautiful sisters: The writing on the wall between us brings us closer*

2008-01-21T00:54:00.000-08:00

2008-01-20T23:54:00.000-08:00

Who is Climbing PoeTree?

2008-01-20T14:22:00.001-08:00

These are the most amazing and talented channels of the great goddess. It is an honor and privilege to work with them, to know them. I will be joining them on their 56-city tour this coming fall to complete a full-length book capturing the visual glory of these environmental protectors, these angels of change.

so many blessings, so blessed*

She is little but she is on fire*

2008-01-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

Haviland Stillwell

Layla Love Shot Me
By Haviland Stillwell
With the help of Tori Amos

DECEMBER 2004

I'm sitting on a frozen bench in a frozen city, waiting for Layla Love to answer her door. I'm early, as usual, poised like a doll. I heard about Layla from the producer of my upcoming concert, THE REAL SECRET. We need publicity shots – and my producer's let me know that Layla's our girl.

My producer arrives, late as usual, and we enter Layla’s then-apartment in Soho. The place is small and red and oh-so-starving-artist – artwork and clothing strewn about, beautiful furniture that was either found on the street, or in some amazing Victorian antique store.

I don’t really notice Layla at first – which is indicative of how self-absorbed I am, at the moment. Things have been going on – you know – things that happen when you’re 22, on Broadway, playing parts on and off stage, and keeping LOTS of secrets – most of them TOO real (read: too painful) to deal with in any other way than through the body’s demise, which, unbeknownst to me, is coming.

I've got no idea of what's to come that day or, for that matter, that year, as I look in the mirror and draw my Betty Boop lips…

Layla’s light, airy, childlike voice gently directs me – I tell her I want the shot we use to be sexy, provocative, mysterious…exactly the way I've been trying to seem in my everyday life. I want to become the image I've been fighting to emulate, and Layla gets that.

I know she gets it as my producer begins to light 300 tea lights on the wood floor, surrounding my then-curvy, mostly naked self. I know I should feel hot and frightened - open flames no more than two inches away from my body - but I feel absolutely frozen still – in life, in that moment, in everything…I stay still. I stop breathing.

This is a fire hazard.

Layla turns on Tori Amos and I make a joke about how totally lesbionic this situation is – like, could we GET more cliché? And Layla, smiling in her nonchalant way, snaps more.

Sometimes I think you want me to touch you
How can I when you build a great wall around you?

“Look at me,” Layla says, and, frozen still, not moving an inch for real fear that I’ll get burned, I shift my eyes towards her, and for the first time, I SEE Layla Love. The alarming blue eyes, the Amazonian stature, the jet black hair…She gets closer…she snaps…she gets closer still…

She's two inches from my face, and this is scarier than the fire…what if she sees the truth? What if she knows? My eyes water, tiny tears escape down my cheeks. I'm in agony and my body is in despair, and I am terrified she'll know it.

Anyway, we get the shots. They are hot, perfect, mysterious, provocative. We deem Layla Love a rockstar.

JUNE 2006

I 've been in and out of my Broadway show, family drama, an on-again-off-again quasi-relationship, and ... my body is now screaming. Layla, back from a world tour, gets in touch via myspace, and we set up a time to shoot.

We meet at the seaport – we're both on time, this time. I notice a change in her. We are obviously both going through it. New York has thawed; I have not.

I'm far bonier now - pale, drawn, and Layla, handing me black eyeliner, says, “Here, you need this…”

And I do. She gets me – bony and sad and all that – in the heat of an NYC summer. We get many shots, all of which people will later respond to with coos and smiles of approval. Who would have thought a commentary on anger and depression would garner such sexual energy…

Why do we crucify ourselves, every day?

Layla and I get better – we both mend some of the pain, some of the secrets, we both grow over time.

I introduce her to my friends. She shoots. She scores.

She starts showing up places with me, and I introduce her to people as, “my photographer.” It’s simply FABULOUS to have her as a part of my entourage, because I love this girl – I love her work, I love her energy, I love what she is able to GET when we work together.

We’re all over myspace, all love to Miss Love, and I ask her to join the party on Rosie O’Donnell’s Gay Family Cruise. She accepts…

She’s been everybody else’s girl – maybe one day she’ll be her own.

JULY 2007

We are standing in the ocean. The entourage is gathered there, having docked at a private island in the Bahamas. The sun is setting and we are, all at once, deliciously filthy and perfectly clean.

My “He-Man” lookalike, Craig Ramsay, lifts me into the air, and Layla shoots. I giggle, referencing “Dirty Dancing.” I let him lift me – I trust him. I trust Layla. I slip from his hands - I drop. The blue water and Layla’s camera catch me.

We all laugh out loud, floating in the water…free…

Come and take me away –
I want to play in your floating city
Yeah, floating city... yeah…

I have an ever growing respect for these women. I meet Haviland by chance when she showed up at my Soho appartment for the first shoot of many. She brought Riese and many other great women into the mix- the ever growing mix. It is wonderful to build dreams with other driven souls- learning that even when they are little they can be firce...

Training Others to Triumph

2008-01-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

Women's eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century 2008

By Alexus Jones - WeNews correspondent

(WOMENSENEWS)--Pushing, pushing, pushing, resting and pushing again, for the improvement of women's lives is the heart of the work of 20 women and one man selected as Women's eNews 21 Leaders for the 21 st Century for 2008.

One is a sports executive who wrested $11.5 million from one of the powerful pro basketball franchises, the New York Knicks, for tolerating the sexual harassment of her and her co-workers; another trains indigenous women to become paid reporters for her news services in Mexico and Nepal. Yet another energizes historically black women's colleges in the United States and organized women to topple a brutal African dictator. These leaders and the 17 others Women's eNews names today share a vision of a better world for women.

The Women's eNews 21 Leaders for the 21 st Century reflect the Women's eNews global readership: One lives in Liberia, another in Vietnam; others work and seek change in U.S. cities from Chicago to Biloxi, Miss., and many points in between.

Choosing the 21 Leaders for the 21 st Century was especially difficult this year because of the overwhelming response by readers, contributors and Women's eNews freelance writers. The Women's eNews staff and board members carefully considered each nomination and were inspired by all of the nominees' personal commitments, strategies and victories. Sometimes during the process the selection committee was so torn by the need to limit the honorees to only 21 that the only resolution was to open a new file and begin the nomination process for 2009.

"I continue to be surprised, amazed, heartened and humbled by those nominated to be a Women's eNews 21 Leader," says Rita Henley Jensen, editor in chief of Women's eNews. "Their often unnoticed initiatives are enormously significant in the worldwide efforts to ensure women take their place in all aspects of daily life, from the equitable distribution of food to ending tyranny and all that is required to accomplish both."

Women's eNews invites its readers to be amazed too by the work of the following 21 Leaders for the 21 st Century for 2008.

A fierce woman. An intelligent woman. A leader.

2008-01-19T16:15:00.001-08:00

A fierce woman
An intelligent woman
A leader

May the prickly roses be true to their meaning.

Layla Love

2008-01-19T15:29:00.001-08:00

I will learn how to raise my voice and share. I am in training. These words came raw and unplanned. Inspired enough to join forces. We have the right not to remain silent.

Gloria Steinem

2008-01-19T14:56:00.001-08:00

Keynote Speaker at the Freedom on Our Terms Convention

2008-01-19T14:55:00.001-08:00

This woman brings us honest and open questions, keeps us thinking and acting, and moving toward peace and involvement. We are in need of heroes of the brave at heart.

Thank you, Rosie. Thank you to all the great women who made this possible.

a dairy of many: we are never the same person twice.

2008-01-19T08:17:00.000-08:00

i have been wanting to write for years. i have been writing for years. time for sharing. stop stop. not time yet. how not to let the ego pull me forward? i only step to the center after spending much time on the sidelines, watching, growing, listening, learning. i have so much more to learn, so very far to go, but there comes a moment in evolution when one feels ripe, so ripe they might burst. i am in one of these great times, when the pain of holding back becomes greater than the fear of letting go.

i am sharing personal stories with anyone who is interested. i do not claim to be an expert on anything, in fact, i remain a mystery even to myself - so how could i ever claim to know another? the sad lonely truth of this world. impossible to get under another's skin. yet, oh how hard we try.

life makes me laugh - it is so ridiculous.

this book will be seven chapters. it will explore natural health and healing. fuck the drugs and the system. greed and lack of common sense has turned American health care into a nightmare.

rape. yes, it happens to most women, many children, girls, and boys. it happens every two seconds in America. it is a strategy of war. if there is ever to be a chance of seeing a healing humanity we must start here - the basic respect for our sacred temples...breakdowns into breakthroughs. i will never be a victim. i will not plant this seed of fear within me. women find your weapons, whether it be your voice or your leaving.

this book also explores the modern role of family, of friends and lovers, of politics and sex, the environment, the spirit, the reasons we keep breathing and the paths we find toward joy. it is complex - a reflection of life through my eyes.

One of the more raw interviews from this summer. ps. is using the word "bastard" when talking about my mama really ok? pps. i am a bastard child, too

2008-01-18T18:24:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to me how media shapes us, how it boils a lifetime down into a single page, exaggerating some points, using hot-button words, some beautiful understatements thrown in for balance. Nothing we ever read is accurate of a life. Still, we try and we try. It is this attempt to explain and deliberate on our humanity that intrigues me...

trauma to transformation. we do not have a choice in what happens to us in this life. but we do have a choice in how we react. i think art transforms raw emotion into something more useful. i am not ashamed to paint my face or hide behind his black and blue marks, to cry rivers until the soil is ripe with fresh fruit and the rebuilding, the rebirth comes like sweet unexpected relief. i seek joy, understanding, and honesty. the rest i leave behind.

Layla Love - Photography baptism by fire
By Bessie King
Layla Love may be categorized as an up and coming artist for her photography, but to those who know her past, she is better seen as a warrior. Using her camera as therapy after her tumultuous upbringing during which Love has been raped, beaten and diagnosed with a neurological movement disorder, her art is understandably hard-fought.

Love’s mother, an Irish gypsy, was a bastard child forced to work as a farmhouse worker after being separated from her mother in Northern Ireland. She got pregnant on a trip to America, giving the artist no specific cultural roots like her mother. She moved and lived in more than 30 countries before turning 18. While still an older teen, she decided to leave home to travel across America and Europe. Struggling for money and stability, Love took refuge in art at age 12 trying to channel her emotions to create something hoping to make people think and grow. Photography became the means for her creative expression. Her first photo expedition was on her 21st birthday in Darfur.

“I was with an anthropologist who had been following a group of women who self-mutilated as a form of protection, a practice which began with the colonial slave trade and still continues today,” Love said.

Her expedition into Sudan and Chad influenced her desire to keep traveling and exposing people’s stories from across the globe. She has traveled to Africa and the Middle East. She has gone to all parts of Asia, reaching Japan, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Her residences on her voyages have ranged from orphanages to churches and even jails at times. Love has called Australia, London and New York home and has collected thousands of pictures from her travels.

From July 31 to August 4, Love had the chance to debut her work in a solo exhibition of 100 pieces from her extensive portfolio, showcased at the World Culture Open Center in New York City. The exhibition, “Representing Woman - Unbreakable Surrealism,” documents the combination of chaos and order within human life. Photographing the masses and the esteemed alike, including Gloria Steinem, Ani DiFranco, and the Dalai Lama, Love creates a fusion between a photojournalistic approach and the capturing of fantasy.

“In my life, thus far the only thing that remains constant is my obsession with recording life as honestly and openly as I can,” she said. “I only hope that in sharing my work people will stay open to make their own voice real.” Although peaceful in nature and more than willing to chat, one may wonder if a difficult background is the only reason why this woman has a ‘flower child’ personality. But as she explains, there should be no stereotypes of prejudices because they may shock those who employ them.

When growing up Love was exposed to rich and poor environments alike. Her father, of Russian descent, has a stable life and economic means. This gave Love chance to mingle with diplomats and models, learning how to act in any situation with comfort. In the midst of her disjointed upbringing, Love was also diagnosed with crippling Dystonia, a neurological movement disorder in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures.

Adding to the turmoil of dealing with a movement disorder that affects a quarter-million Americans, Love has also been raped and beaten. After the incident, the first thing she reached for was her camera. She chose to videotape herself while making calls on her phone, trying to get help, as it was the best way she could process. Eventually, Love was able to create with what she lived through.

“I have always lived in chaos, knowing I was loved. Love and chaos…if you want to trace me to my roots, that’s what you will find,” she added.

Her photographs are as direct as she is in explaining her history. Featuring young and old, in portraits or nudes, each photo tells a story. Whether it is a child looking intently at the camera or a beautiful sunset by the ocean, art aficionados saw a variety of pieces from fine art to surrealism in her New York exhibit. Featured in the exhibit was the work of Allison Kramer, whose photo-essayist approach documenting Love’s life and career reflect their mutual passion to produce art. Kramer covers the progressive stages of Love’s illness, vulnerability, and most intimate relationships. In regards to relationships, Love admits that marriage and single-hood are only labels.
A self-described passionate woman she is torn between wanting ‘the other half’ and enjoying her independence. While still learning about Love, the woman, who does not acknowledge age in her life, admits that she will continue to meet possible soul mates.
“In every country [I visit] I make sure to do three things: visit the holy places, read the papers, and have friends and lovers who are locals,” she said.
What the future may bring for this survivor could be as unexpected as her life has been. Although she is a college graduate, with a bachelor’s in journalism and visual communication from the University of California at Santa Cruz, she wants to continue to educate herself, relying on her instinctive character. Other projects are also in the works with four books ready to be printed, but waiting for a publisher. Most importantly, she wants to excel and help others know life is, after all, beautiful. “I am ready to share…I draw my inspiration from God, by a higher power. I am looking for gallery walls to fill, for people to work with [and] I am an unrelenting optimist,” Love said. Love is a member of the arts collaborative Red Monsoon, where artists embrace a shared spirit and create works that bridge on their experiences. To see Love’s art visit http://www.lovephotography.org/.
Bessie King is the Entertainment Editor for Blast Magazine. A Mexican-American Texas native who resides in Boston, she has worked for Spanish and English media alike. She can be reached at king.be@blastmagazine.com
In Culture, Features, People, Photo Stories, The Blast Interview September 3, 2007

still black trailer

2008-01-18T18:13:00.001-08:00

Kortney Ryan Ziegler. My oldest and dearest friend, my art family. Her mind is brilliant, the message is always both beautiful and honest - more open than most. She is a member of the tribe who believes that there is no such thing as overexposure; there is rather a need and a will to share...and that is what we do. I will be doing the still photography for Still Black this spring. I developed my creative eye with this woman so now is the time for us to meld into one vision.

So much respect.

The first book I will complete after A Dairy of Many....

2008-01-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

I have the privilege of photographing these wonderful women for a full-length book, which is a visual exploration of Hurricane Season. I will be joining them on their 56-city tour this coming summer. Be ready for the fire in your belly to be joined by the light, center stage. Activism is ablaze, my soul is ready, my eyes open, my heart honored.

I will also be getting some huge new prints ready to create a gallery show that follows and moves with the wisdom, the hidden messages in water. We need to purify, we need to respect this Earth. The time for change is now. The reasons are many, the meaning is overabundant. I am ready.

I am blessed. I am alive with this possibility*

Who is Climbing PoeTree?

2008-01-18T17:51:00.001-08:00

These are the most talented soul sisters that the world could hope for. To bear witness to their art is a blessing beyond dreams. Make it real. Be inspired. Create, act, do, enjoy*

Allison Kramer

2008-01-18T17:25:00.001-08:00

Layla has been my photography subject for a long time now. I consider her one of my best friends, we have been the best support for each other through the happiest times and the most difficult. I have to give credit to her for being such a wonderful influence for creativity in my life. She has shaped me and has encouraged me to stand tall, be soft, and absorb life as it comes.

Thank you Layla for being who you are.

If you would like to see more about me and the work that I do with Layla, please visit my website at: www.allisonkramer.com

Layla and I, as a team, are going to be publishing two books in tandem within the upcoming months.

Layla and I thrive by creating art together. We need to tell a story. Her story. This visual diary aims to encourage change in the way people think about women, the power of art, and standing up for what you believe in.

This book is a visual guide to empowerment. A salute to women. A guide to tell the world and its stereotypes and conformist expectations to fuck off. This is a book to encourage women to do what they wish, to live free but be careful about it. To live for a purpose and belong to their meaning. We deserve equality by empowering ourselves first. We deserve the respect that men do. We deserve the accolades that we are capable of. We deserve our own revolution.

Women stand tall, salute to the fire within us, let's take these steps for our children, for our humankind, and embrace what we are.

I photograph Layla Love: My subject, my muse, my inspiration.

2008-01-18T17:23:00.001-08:00

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

My voice will be heard.

2008-01-18T16:19:00.000-08:00

Sick

2008-01-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

LIFE HAS NO LIMITS...www.allisonkramer.com

2008-01-18T15:51:00.001-08:00

Appalachia Love.

2008-01-18T15:47:00.001-08:00

Love in the morning
Love in the evening
Love in the afternoon

OUR WORLD IS OUR CANVAS. See for yourself.

Love in the Making...A Photo Documentary

2008-01-18T15:46:00.001-08:00

Climb climb climbing...

2008-01-18T15:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJSn_RmTgKw

Killing is not the only way to get on the news...

2008-01-18T14:29:00.000-08:00

Playing with positive media. This is a preview from a full news broadcast I will post soon. I was filming down South for a movie, Method in the Mountains, by Chad Meador: http://www.chadmeador.com

We did two news programs that weekend, a newspaper interview, and wrote *love* in 100-foot letters on the side of a mountain. It is strange to see myself in-front of the camera. Something I have to allow. Still shy hiding, behind so much. I want to stand up straight and speak loud. I am. I am learning. Enjoying the process at that...

2008-01-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

music i love so such it spills over to share with you...*

2008-01-18T13:30:00.000-08:00

If you think that the Middle East is a desert wasteland, think again. The richness of the words, the voice, and soul of this woman are mind-blowing...* Open.

Nadine Khouri
http://www.nadinekhouri.net/news/

more than meets the eye.

2008-01-17T22:48:00.000-08:00

2008-01-17T22:35:00.000-08:00

Reformation Exists and Beauty is Everywhere

2008-01-17T22:26:00.000-08:00

2008-01-17T22:19:00.000-08:00

Where are all the stories of enlightened women? I know you...where you at? Tell your stories, super-goddesses. I'll be your holy text if you be mine*

2008-01-06T11:39:00.000-08:00

Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness. Work or sit or walk, but one thing has to be a continuous thread: make more and more moments of your life luminous with awareness. Let the candle of awareness burn in each moment, in each act. The cumulative effect is what enlightenment is. The cumulative effect, all the moments together, all small candles together, become a great source of light.

The story is that when Gautam Buddha died he reached the doors of paradise. Those doors rarely open, only once in a while, in centuries--visitors don't come every day, and whenever someone comes to those doors the whole of paradise celebrates it. One more conscious-ness has attained to flowering, and existence is far richer than it has ever been before.

The doors were opened, and the other enlightened people who had entered into paradise before... because in Buddhism there is no God, but these enlightened people are godly--so there are as many gods as enlightened people. They had all gathered at the door with music, with song and with dance. They wanted to welcome Gautam Buddha but to their amazement he was standing with his back to the gate. His face was still looking toward the far shore that he had left behind.

They said, "This is strange. For whom are you waiting?"

He's reported to have said, "My heart is not so small. I'm waiting for all those I have left behind who are struggling on the way. They are my fellow travelers. You can keep the doors closed--you will have to wait a little for the celebration of my entering into paradise, because I have decided to enter this door as the last man. When everybody else has become enlightened and entered the door, when there is nobody left outside, then my time will have come to enter."

This story is a story--it cannot be an actual fact. It is not within your hands; once you have become enlightened you will have to enter into the universal source of life. It is not a question of your choice or decision. But the story is that he is still trying, even after his death.

Warm on the inside, burning in the belly, yet oh so cool on the outside*

2008-01-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

Find ways to keep your head out of the clouds of misinformation that are being beamed around the world as information. It is not so simple to stay out of the sway of collective public opinion. Center yourself in remembrance and vision, whenever you can.

“This is a very strange world: you are asking people, “Who are you?” and they don't know themselves, and you depend on what they say about you -- you depend on it. You go on collecting information. That's why it hurts when somebody says you are a fool. Why does it hurt? Let him say that you are a fool; just by his saying it you don't become a fool. But why does it hurt then? It hurts because all that you know about yourself depends on public opinion. Now that opinion comes from the same source -- from the outside -- from where you have been collecting the opinion that you are very intelligent. Now you are in a contradiction, that's why you are upset, disturbed. Now he has created a contradiction. Now he has created trouble for you, he has created a dilemma. Now you are again confused, you don't know who you are.”

Osho, excerpted from The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 12, Vol. 12, chapter 9

New years...celebrating the movement of time...

2008-01-02T22:24:00.000-08:00

New Years Eve this year was one of the most beautiful moments of my life...bringing forward all the intentions of courage, celebration, art as healing - the divine pouring through us in a circle in the middle of the warmest space. Thank you Alaxia, Sparla, both soul blessings to a universe of meditation and intention. To fresh cherries, mangos, and coconut sorbet with mint leaves. We are the every-day wonder - the richness and the treasure - we are small, oh so small. We are everything if everything is a chaos ball we call God. We live each day as a blessing.

Another Day Another ReAsON whY...
the sound of poetry carries us down the halls
our feet move forward, rarely pausing
light seeps from us while we are sleeping, pours down in rivers of dreams that carry us along
we are
born of star matter
no need
to think
just look up to the sky
the way humanity always has when we are seeking
shelter
refuge
the rhythm and rhythm of un-answerable questions
ring forever in our ear-
circular,
married to the mystery

also rejoicing in the comfort of knowing
that we are loved
that we are beings who emanate and perpetuate love
create and mold meaning
upon one & other
another time another story another days sunrise

i live for joy, for adding to the creative rather than destructive forces vying for this earths center stage
the performance is collaborative
whether socially constructed or innate
* we all leave our mark*

may your mark been seen, felt and heard.
may our stories mix and blend more in the year ahead
it is a collaborative performance- it is a dance-

thank you for sharing in the journey, the celebration, the exhaustion
with me.

my life is what it is:
which is a wonderland of treasure and possibility-
from having the blessed community that i have found on my circling this globe.
i find myself in our shared reflexion.

bless you, love you, need you-
to know that my world is everything it should be-
just to know the friends, family&love that is you, that is us, that is a million stars shooting a single beam of wild intoxicating light.

May explosions of undreamable delights shower upon you from above and below, left and right.

have fun, be righteous and always spark in the dark,
make the world better where healing is needed: heal through art.

Revolution begins with personal evolution*

love and liberation...

//layla

Women Who Love Women

2007-09-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

Create a Free Slideshow

Copulating Creatures

2007-09-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

Create a Free Slideshow

A World Without Categories

2007-09-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

Create a Free Slideshow

Postcard

2007-09-23T20:14:00.000-07:00

Hi ya'll,
Hey check out Joel's blog:
Ski bumming

Pioneer Feminists Who Changed America Are Great

2007-04-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

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I have thousands of photos covering such a wide range of human stories so choosing which set to post first took some contemplation.

I have chosen to share images from several of my experiences documenting the Veteran Feminists of America. Know these women. They are still working hard, still making waves, full of smiles and rage and everything I am they have been.

I bear my respect and admiration for those who've come before me, those who have forged the path. Who have made it possible for me to be here now writing these words as freely as I do.

I turn thirty next month. Not so long ago I would have been condemned to the fringes of society; past my sell-by-date for marriage in my child-bearing prime, almost too old get by on a youthful sway of sex appeal and play.

And although there is a long way to go before we are clear, in the clear, and living in harmony and freedom, yes there is much to do. Still now is a platform, a spectrum. There are so many shades of gray in between how we can live and how we 'should' live? There is so much opportunity at hand; a whole plethora of options. I can weight the benefits and the cost of each in a strategic way to create a life in which my dreams have the chance to flourish.

I have the right not to be silent. I belong to no one, I own nothing. I am neither for society or against it. I live sometimes of this world and other times I am just passing through it. I am challenging my own creation. Baring life everyday through these hips, through fingertips, from mind and out of mouth. I have no one else suckling and so I am free to nurse myself, to milk my own nurturing. See how I grow myself up?

I am my own nuclear family woven into the fabric of a world unfolding...I am offering only my own truths, fears, visions: My art through my eyes.

I seek peace within myself; everything I do is motivated by the understanding that I will never know the whole story, that your prospective is as valid as mine. I will never know you fully, whomever you maybe. Even after a lifetime in one room together we only become more unknowable. I have made peace with this and so now I seek only to know myself and share what I find with reverence and grace. To be open to the stories of others so that we may mix and intertwine...become something greater than the sum of a single self.

Whether chosen or enforced, conscious or unconscious we are all partaking in a collaborative performance. I think we are due some applause. We need no longer wait in single line crawling to center stage but must rather unite forces right where we are standing right now, however imperfect and incomplete we may feel we are not. Now is the time. We need each other now more than ever. We can light-up the world with our unabashed brilliance and our unashamed humanness.

Which brings me back to my tribute:

Thank you Barbara Love, Murial Fox, Jacqueline Ceballos, Gloria Steinem, Zoe Ann Nicholson, Margie Adam............the list goes on and on, and stretches across every woman ever born, every man born of woman, and everyone who has loved a woman and shared energy with her along the way.

They are having events to honor the women featured in Barbara Love's newest book, Pioneer Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. This week they will be living it up in both Berkeley and LA for all of you folks blessed with West Coast existence. I had hoped to join them in celebration, to continue documenting their story. I have learned much and been inspired without fail. However, I have decided after much contemplation that I must spend the month ahead transforming my intentions into hard-copy. Look for the birth of my first book, Representing Women, come June. For now I leave you to trace your breath to its roots, see how deep you can take it. There are many teachings, there is much gratitude to be found.

*layla

If you are looking for some inspiring summer reading, here is a fine place to start.

VFA

VFA is a nonprofit organization for veterans of the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement. The goals are to enjoy the camaraderie forged during those years of intense commitment, to honor ourselves and our heroes, to document our history, to rekindle the spark and spirit of the Feminist Revolution and act as keeper of the flame so that the ideals of Feminism continue to reverberate and influence others.

Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975

Barbara J. Love's Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975 is the first comprehensive directory to document many of the founders and leaders (including both well-known and grassroots organizers) of the Second Wave Women's Movement. It tells the stories of more than two thousand individual women and a few notable men who together reignited the Women's Movement and made permanent changes to entrenched customs and laws.

The biographical entries on these pioneering Feminists represent their many factions, all parts of the country, all races and ethnic groups, and all political ideologies. Nancy F. Cott's foreword discusses the movement in relation to the earlier First Wave and presents a brief overview of the Second Wave in the context of other contemporaneous social movements.

BARBARA J. LOVE has worked as an editor, writer, and journalist, and is currently a member of the board of the Veteran Feminists of America. She is the author of Foremost Women in Communications and coauthor of Sappho Was a Right On Woman. NANCY F. COTT is the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and the Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of numerous books including The Grounding of Modern Feminism.

female re-form

2007-04-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

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