Beautiful Things In Life

A Visual and Word Journey of Photos and Videos

Peru. The year before the pandemic, I took my son. I hope one day to return with my husband and my son. In broken Spanish I had the most wonderful conversations with local people. Even with broken Spanish I got taken for a local by both locals and tourists. This is because I feel this place. An Indigenous shaman once said one of my bodies is lying at the bottom of one of these mountains from a lifetime where I was sacrificed. Yet I felt, from the local people nothing but warmth. “We feel you,” they said. This is the same trip where I met the Elder on the Tarmac who hugged me beyond language.

These Hummingbirds are in just in back of the Belmond Hotel, where we stayed for one night. My mentor at the time told me I needed to spend at least one night there, so we did. The chocolate was amazing. I was dealing with a myriad of chronic health issues and at the last minute, threw out my back. Yet I prayed and said, “God, you told me to come and I came. If you want me to do this work, you’ll have to heal me so I can climb up there.” Sure enough I climbed Huyana Piccu to the very top without pain and danced up there to “Forever Young,” while butterflies danced all around. My mentor told me that long ago, before recorded history, mothers sacrificed there infant children up there, believing it to be a better fate than having them fall into the hands of ill-intentioned aliens. I spoke light language loud as I climbed, assisting other climbers to give a wide berth, for which I was sincerely grateful. My son and I made it down just as the rain drops began to fall. It was hard to come home. I knew I wasn’t meant to live there, but part of me just wanted to stay up there under the canopy of Macchu Picchu for as long as I lived. Have you ever been to a place that seemed to hold part of your soul, but you knew you couldn’t stay? I felt the same way in Ireland, when my husband and I stayed at the Tara. The ocean there felt to me like such a translucent place of peace, and the women who owned the B&B were my instant sisters. They hugged me the moment I walked in and said glowing things. I don’t consciously remember, but clearly, we knew one another.

I’ve been home a while now. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone far from home. But the wonder finds me. The beauty is here and all around. I have found it is quite easy to nurture an ecosystem. Healing is really easy when there are no major hindrances. Even though a few people still spray chemicals, our neighborhood is full of bees. We live within city limits, though its been debated for years whether we are in the burbs or not, but either way, medians filled with pollinator friendly plants and letting your dandelions grow has become a thing during the time we’ve lived here. I miss traveling, but it isn’t time yet to do it again. Some day. Some day, it will be. In the meantime, I remember fondly, things like this violinist playing in the lobby in Peru.

Yet the world finds me even just in my own neighborhood, as I’ve written about the grandmama from Poland who spoke no English and danced with me across the street and taught me the word for dragonfly in Polish.

Likewise, the cosmos are literally blooming right where I am. Some of these cosmo flowers have gone to seed, others are still budding out. Like all of us, at different stages, yet all so sacred and beautiful. Also, like the aspects inside of us, each taking their turns to bloom, release, go to seed. This picture is from this morning. The one just below it from a few weeks ago.

My husband and I are reading two of my favorite childhood books - well we’ve finished one and we are in the process of reading the other - both by Monica Furlong. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve read Wise Child or Juniper. I love the main characters in both, and the one is a prequel to the other. Certain things I remember and others jump out at me in fresh ways. There is so much wisdom in the pages! I long to live at Juniper’s House - the one she lives in when she becomes Wise Child’s mentor in the first book, which is the second book. I also can relate to both characters as children - neither of them initially like to clean. This is something I struggle with as well. I long for a Feng Shui home, but organization does not come as naturally to me as improvisation. I know for some of you it is the opposite! Bless us all!

This summer I saw Crane, Eagle, Owl, (A pair of white snowy owls came to me at a moment of great need as confirmation of answered prayer,) Crow, Cardinal, Chickadee, Sparrow, Blue Joy, Wood Pecker and Turtle Dove. I remember so well the Condors from Peru, as you can see below.

The Eagle and the Condor prophecy is thought to originate with the Quechua people. Two of my favorite women in Peru, besides the Quechua speaking Elder on the tarmac were illiterate weavers who sold their beautiful scarves and sweaters outside of one of the hotels where we stayed.

Both the Quechua women and myself knew only a little Spanish, and they knew no English, but together we ended up having a conversation about how formal schooling doesn’t teach you anything important. I was reminded of it when I saw this note from

Peter d'Errico

I have come to see advanced degrees only as “approval stickers for gatekeepers.” If you actually show the expertise that reveals the fraud of the whole system, they disenfranchise you or ignore you or attack you, or reclaim your truth in a repackage form they think they can control. Perhaps this is why I never thought, even from a young age I would pursue an advanced degree. I am surrounded by people who have them, but I don’t think those who do know any more than the illiterate Quechua women. What the best of them know is the same as the illiterate Quechua women, articulated based on back of an incredible amount of intellectual data points. These can be helpful only in so much as they guide us back to what the Quechua women already know, and or help us develop a relationship with intellect and tech that respects what the Quechua Elder communicated with her beyond-words hug and the simplicity of her hand gesture - a sacred mudra I will always cherish in my heart. and being.

So dance with the cosmos a little.

Let your peace fly, while you root into Pachamama, our earth mother, and grandmother. But remember, as one of my taxi drivers told me in Peru, Pachamama can also be a political movement, and one that the people do not necessarily endorse. Just like the green agenda that is really the technocratic opposite of authentic love of our earth Mother/Grandmother who loves and holds us in her body.