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To calculate
the cacophony of being would shrink the orchestra. Music: the science of souls. Your sound won't be rated. It is not logic, review, word or click-bait. Music emanates from the skin, though calculation may show the room is silent. Quantity is no measure of what a heart can hold; a person's ability to reach through years and distance. Numbers on a page don't keep me fed; data did not conceive me. It is not measurement that gave me my voice. written in downtown Charleston, February 4, 2018
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Photos by Elisa Garcia de la Huerta, elisaghs.com  I am girl. I am girl? I am girl.
My friend sits a head taller than me, his arm over my shoulder. We are riding on the train. I’m looking at the places where my nail polish chipped and he asks me, “Is it hard being a girl?” I say, “I don’t know what it means to be a girl.” He nods at my nails, “I mean doing things like that.” The clarification falls on a sallow place inside me, a place where I put ideas that I don’t want to take root in the world. I say, “It’s hard having people assume that’s what being a girl is.” Read the full piece here.  She asks me how it’s going and I say, “Quietly.” Quietly as a butterfly, as a breeze that barely moves through the grass, perceptible, subtle, not trying to announce its presence but rather just being a presence. Read full piece here Original Photo by Samantha Nelson
 The song is constant. A drone in my ears on the back porch and the click of the lighter briefly keeping time.
The summer solstice is the high holiday for the shriek and roar of life and the cicadas will not let me forget it. I found one of their golden shells today clinging to a wall. It was empty but it reminded me of a life being lived a little bigger elsewhere. The song and thrum are constant. Life is constant. This year, I am praying to god to let me succumb to it. Read full piece here  I can see medicine and its covered in garbage. At this moment I may wrap my fingers around the crooked chain link fence, but I won’t push my way in, because if I treat myself with that which grows here I’ll always see toilet paper and Lays potato chip bags.
Plantain, common mallow, sweet violet, mugwort, dandelion, cleavers and wild spinach are only just getting started. It’s spring in the city. We could be eating. The city is humming, like a huge electric generator of appliances, wires and human pheromones. There are only small signs of the season. The trees in the little squares of earth are starting to bloom. I send up a sigh and ask it to visit the mountains for me, since I am not there myself. Read more here...  It comes into sight. The entrance is almost grand, surrounded by the white dust that coats everything.
Even the building itself has been faded into this same flat white, but the door is coated in a bright bronze, and the sign that whips back and forth in the wind off the lake boasts a colorful image of a mountain against a cheerful sky. Upon a closer look the mountain takes the form of a woman. Pachamama Hostel y Restaurante. I pass Los Abrazos, with it’s Guatemalan food and Mayan Astrology readings. As I pass I whistle at the solemn blond dog that lays asleep in the road, the dark spot under its eye slowly and constantly oozing. Beside the narrow footpath are flyers taped and stapled to a few electrical poles and a piece of propped plywood, advertising meditation retreats. Over the bridge I look down. Beside the trickle of water weaving its way down to the lake, a mayan woman with a long braid down her back carries a basket and walks with a little boy. The door is wide open when I enter the hostel. I see the prayer flags and the camping tents up above, the big brown and black dog called Rambo sleeping in the dust just inside. A scant piece of barbed wire at the top of the fence. I’ve come to appreciate the chaotic use of space. The stone path gives out about halfway and becomes brown dirt, in which stands now the two year old wearing an oversized t-shirt, a can of peas between her hands. She looks at me and yells, “NO!” And runs away laughing. This is our game, a language of play we can both understand. Read more here... 
It is altogether familiar and like nothing I have ever known. The shuttle, the bright day, the trees that are like pines or redwoods but are not pines nor redwoods. The dog with the lame foot wandering between the people, taxis, motorcycles and old cars, eating scraps off the ground. The people gathered at the fence to watch the planes take off, or wandering the dirt paths carved into the hillsides alongside the highway, or riding in the backs of trucks. As I leave the airport in Guatemala City, I see the booth offering shuttles to Antigua for $12 a person. My trajectory is not a strange one. Many travelers wait outside the next shuttle out of the city. Guatemala City is a sprawling, busy mess. I imagine it would make a great location for a movie- a detective story, or a drama thriller, perhaps, but it is no place for the uninformed, lone tourist. Read more here...  We entered the train wearing our bright kimonos, colorful hairpieces, lipstick making our mouths into neat little jewels. It was 6 AM and it was very clear that we were the only ones on the train who were on our way to a party.
I knew we were getting closer when I saw an explosion of gold glitter on a Manhattan sidewalk. The sun was just barely rising as we entered Judson Memorial Church for an early-morning dance party, cheerfully titled "Shine On". At the door we were handed a bag of chocolates and offered a hug by a woman in spandex.... Read Full Article HERE  Deeming a a woman “mentally ill” is a dubious process. According to a study by the Daily Mail, women are 20-40% more likely to report psychological illnesses. Are women naturally more likely to develop mental illness than men, or is this a product of gender stereotypes?
Read full article HERE  Andrew Hoepfner met us in the sunny living room of the San Damiano Mission, where his show Houseworld is to take place.
"Houseworld is meant to be a kind of yoga for the emotions,” he said. Read full article HERE |