home and time

Time is the measurement of matter through space.

The earth is a clock. Our bodies are clocks. We are the walking dancing clocks of the universe. Our lives our existence measure our movements through space, space the body of God. We move through the body of God and time is the measure of the length of our movement.

I finished my meditation this morning late. My body is tired and depleted from the drive in and back out again of Los Angeles. Tired from the excitement that gets rooted in my shoulders and down my spine. I overslept and woke on the foot of terrible dreams that filled me with a sense of mild dread as I entered the world again. There is another artist here who is hanging her paintings in the space that I usually do my morning research in, so I moved across the patio out towards the studio to Beato’s house to do my prayer. I walked down past the tree and benches and over to edge of the courtyard. Down below is Annie Besant’s house. I looked at it and imagined what it felt like to live here and have Annie Besant a stone’s throw down the hill. Her beautiful cottage visible and a few steps away past a potted rose and wildflowers growing between flowering thyme.  And then to have your dearest and best friend living in the house connected to yours – private and single but not solitary, guardians of each other’s solitude.  Krishma Murti near. Otto Heino a short drive away. And all this space in between. So much space above, into the sky and over the mountains, and so much space below, down the swoop of the valley and so much space within.

Besant House 4/12/10 Lucy Madeline Ojai, CA

This is what I want most in the world. To live close in a community of other artists and thinkers and to live with meaning. To have so much space. To be in the rhythms of nature and the cosmos but to be in the world at the same time. These people did not retreat from life. They found life in the retreat. They built something here. Something that has outlasted them and provided a home for me. It has spanned past the measure of their lives and still exists for me and for others. I want this. This is what I want. I don’t ever want to leave.

I’m sitting outside looking out over the violet flowers and the tree tops that come up towards the patio and there are green hills that literally roll and spill and fly into green and blue and rock faced mountains with clouds that look like they are coming from outer space, a berth so wide I can’t believe it. I can smell things. I can taste things. I can hear things I can’t usually hear. It has taken some time, but slowly this space has taken hold of me and I am myself again. It’s so hard to measure the loss of self. It’s so necessary in order to get along in the world, especially Los Angeles and Los Angeles is not the world. But it certainly feels that way when you’re in it.

Besant House with Clouds 4/13/10 Lucy Madeline Ojai, CA

I don’t know what time it is anymore. Yesterday was the first time I got into my car in five days. I don’t brush my hair. I don’t wear makeup. I walk when it’s time to walk I work when it’s time to work. Work is always. Work finds me in every moment of the day. There is no separation between life and work and god.  I have developed a relationship with a roadrunner and there is an owl I have seen twice and heard a few times at night. I found a feather when I needed one. I gather sage. I have seen two rattlesnakes and learned a lesson from them about life and purpose. I have been afraid, of failing, of making work that is not acceptable, I have been totally and utterly lost – the moments of the day becoming tangled like hair filled with wet clay. But all in all, through the waiting and worrying and the passages through time and despair, I’m getting back to the place where I can hear myself again. I see how this is the most important thing and must be guarded at all costs.

Owl 4/13/10 Lucy Madeline Ojai, CA

The question I ask and am asked over and over again is: what is the stick by which you measure your life? How do I measure the passage of time and how is it recorded, in my life, on my face, within the shadows and broken crags of my heart, in the dried up or flowing ravines of my soul. Do I measure it in my bank account, in how the numbers grow and dwindle, do I measure it in the aging skin of those around me? How do I count, how do I know what time it is, when it's time to stay, to work, to sleep, to go? What are the clocks that I watch? What sound does their ticking make?

I am going to cut my fiberglass today into small squares like a quilt. Then I will quilt a sphere into a magic clock of flesh and time and space and containment. I will use hot resin that burns and melts and converts the quilted cloth into clear liquid glass and I will paint it with gold dust, woman.

I will sit outside today and read my new book Martha got me for my birthday, a book that is so perfect, so needed, I am sure it will have a profound effect on my work up here. I will eat sprouted garbanzo beans and drink tea and black coffee when my eyes start to fall. I will panic about time and ask someone for help. 


I will see how it goes.




Kevin asked me today: are you happy? Yes. Today, I am happy.