Viva Mexico - The Frida Edition

Mexico brings to mind many images: The warm sun, beautiful beaches, kind people, palm trees, and color, but for me, nothing says Mexico more than Frida Kahlo (1906-1954).

Most of you know that I have long been accused of reminding people of the notorious artist, so one day I decided to dress up like her, augmenting my eyebrows in the process and the rest you could say, is history.

Kimmmm bought me a Frida finger puppet to match hers from Nick and Prestons Imaginarium when we went to New York together in 2008. At this writing, we are supposed to go there a week from today, but with all the ice and storms, we have no idea if it will happen. It’s a nail biter…

But back to Frida. For the last three years, little Frida has traveled in my purse, going on various adventures together. How could I deny Mini-Me a trip to her homeland?





Frida hangs with her peeps.

Sombrero rooftop view of the Malecon.

Hmmm, check out all the hombres in this place, Que Lindo!

Uh-oh, it didn't feel like I had too many...at the time.

More images of me, me meeeee!

Banderas Bay, baby.

"You are the wind beneath my wings..."

Frida made a fun friend with Aqua Junko Artworks

Frida is overcome by Sascha's hommage necklace.

Mwa ha ha, Frida with Lori's skull. 

Love love love love love love love this!!!!!!

Frida getting into more trouble at Le Bistro Jazz Club

A Frida inspired necklace Cindy made in the "Fun with Dick and Jane" workshop at the Hacienda Mosaico.

Frida sunbathing with new amiga at the Villa Del Palmar Resort in Puerto Vallarta.

Viva Mexico - A Bloga-novela

Wow, where to start? Groom and I have just returned home from Mexico after taking a week long workshop studying new jewelry-making techniques with Richard and Jane Salley. I wrote about the magical way this trip unfolded in the blog entry Woo Hoo! Goin’ to Mexico…Thanks in Part to the Kalliope Artist Fellowship just in case any of you are interested in catching up.

We took 2,252 photos during the nine days we were gone. Within the first 24 hours I had used up my camera’s memory card and had to purchase a new one. So it is with great difficulty that we’ve been sorting through our photos, wanting to post the ones we feel might be of interest to you.

My tea bag came with the perfect wisdom tag this morning, “The purpose of life is to enjoy every moment.” Well, let’s just say that we definitely lived our purpose on this retreat.

To tell you that the expedition south of the border was amazing would be trite because it’s such an overused word, but from start to finish, this experience has touched on all the superlatives. It wasn’t just great, it was the greatest. We didn’t just have fun, we had the most fun. Well, you get the idea.

But who wants to sit in the January chill reading about somebody else’s tropical adventure? Even though we are giving this the big thumbs up, there were a few exciting moments here and there, like some blood and guts, our traveling companion falling on the rocks, slicing my toe and having it get infected (I had terrible visions of losing it, or my foot, or my leg…), seeing the immediate aftermath of two serious wrecks (uh-oh, we were riding the bus and one of the accidents involved a bus. Boy, did I ever have a Frida Kahlo moment…), and leaving my purse with everything in it – cash, credit card, passport identification on a bench along the Malecon, and not getting any sleep.

And as long as I’m in the confessional, we also met Jesus, and this next part is so embarrassing to admit, but what I learned about Mexico’s geography comes from watching The Love Boat as a teenager in the 70’s. I remember the Pacific Princess docking in exotic Puerto Vallarta, one of the cruise liner’s port o’calls.

Most of you probably already know this, but it was a new fact to me. Apparently Puerto Vallarta became a household name because of John Huston’s famous movie Night of the Iguana, starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr. It became a symbol of Hollywood glamour.
 

Puerto Vallarta is located on the Pacific side of Mexico about half-way down the coast, mas o menos (more or less). If you drew a straight line on a map from this resort city in the state of Jalisco to the United States, you’d run straight into New Mexico, so we had to move our watches forward two hours.

Situated on Banderas Bay (or Bahia de Banderas if you prefer), and surrounded by the Sierra Madres, the ideal location can boast, depending on who you talk to, that it is either the largest bay in Mexico or the second largest bay in the world. But no one seems to have the final word on that either. Poking around, Bengal Bay in the Indian Ocean claims numero uno while Hudson Bay vies for second place.

But whatever the case, it’s spectacular.

There is no way we can write and post everything in one day. So the plan is to make it simple; for you and for ourselves. Today was just the introduction and we intend to post more photos and episodes in the coming days, a bloga-novela if you will, so stay tuned.

Until then , que tengas un buen dia (have a good day!).

Confessions of a Name Junkie

“What’s in a name?” queried a frustrated Juliet. Shakespeare’s famous question aside, what IS in a name?

Identity.

A name represents who we are and very few of us enjoy it when our name is the object of ridicule. The schoolyard mantra of “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” is great in theory, but is usually repeated when unkind words have been splattered like mud on a brand new shirt.

Names have power. I remember a bully from church camp. Her rampage of brutality did not last long after I discovered her last name. It was gross. I had never heard the term for yucky and vulgar as a last name before and a smile very deep and wide spread throughout my body when I made this discovery. I knew she would not torment me a moment longer, for I had the power over her name and thus, over her.

As an added bonus, the first name she was given morphed easily into “Piggy” by a single vowel. The next time she tried to corner me near the swimming pool and say something cruel, I chose not to use my fists to end her tyranny, but my words. I looked her straight in the eye and said something like, “I seriously doubt a girl named piggy gross has anything more to say to me.” She stopped in her tracks. In that moment I had the power and we both knew it. And that was the simple end to her bullying me.

Names hold power. Top tier celebrities need only one, corporations go to great lengths to protect theirs, items can be made with the right one, and people given odd ones can have a more difficult time on the playground. Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue,” springs to mind.

Each name carries its own vibration, meaning and sound. Some are pleasant and carry strength while others are grating and weak. I didn’t used to love the name Leroy until I heard it in French; LeRoi means “the king.” Cool beans, man. I have a friend whose last name is Strong and she is. I sort of envy all those last names, which express the current of wealth. You know, names like Finegold, Goldrich and Richman.

Okay, fine you say, but what does that have to do with anything?

Identity.

In the last year, this blog has taken several twists and turns. For those of you who have been following it from day one, you remember it started out as a vehicle for my Frida doll that was handmade by Vickie Getchell and presented to me by Kate McKinlay. The occasion was to celebrate a photo taken of Kate, her mother Gay McKinlay, Kimmmm Still and myself on Frida Kahlo’s 100th birthday when we dressed up as an homage to the great artist Frida. This photograph found its way into the hands of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and they included it on their Legacy Wall when they held a retrospective of Frida Kahlo’s artwork.

As Groom and I traveled around the Pacific Northwest selling our whimsical line of postage stamp jewelry, we took Frida doll everywhere, photographing her like the Travelocity Nome and I wrote of our adventures through her eyes. We named the blog “Frida Chiquita Kahlo: The Everyday Anthropologist” so I could write about my observations of human behavior.

Then, in September, after much fun and frivolity with our new cameras, we grew bored of only taking photos of Frida doll and began posting some of what we consider our arty shots. Our weekly entries then transitioned into a photoblog. We toyed with calling our new line of photography, to distinguish it from the jewelry, “The Language of Light.”

The transition seemed logical and linear to us, making sense as we came to these adjustments a little at a time.

Until…

Until I finally had an afternoon to play on the computer. This is a rare event indeed. A friend of ours, Octavia Hunter, has a fantastic website and photoblog called Araxastudios.com and she had just completed an amazing food shoot for a magazine. Her work is stunning, I can’t encourage you enough to check out her work.

Perusing her website, I started laughing. Hers is so straightforward while ours takes a meandering path. When people who know us log on every Wednesday to see and read the next installment, they understand the how’s and whyfor’s, but I finally looked at our website through the eyes of a brand new person and a dozen question marks appeared over my head like a cartoon character.

Our website, called Cinderella Lucinda, is for our jewelry. The blog site, however, is called Frida Chiquita Kahlo: Everyday Anthropologist and the “About Us,” describes The Language of Light photography. What the heck?

I am laughing at myself (or is it with myself?), my rubescent cheeks blushing red with embarrassment. I admit, humbling as this is, that I have had a bit of an identity crisis and looking back on my history, I see that I have expressed the various stages of my life through name changes.

Yes, I am a name junkie.

I could spin doctor that and simply claim my Native American-ness and tell you that I am participating in my cultural heritage and while that may be a factor, the reality is that in 18 years creating jewelry, we have changed our business name four times.

It started out as a “Wearable Art,” line, but too many people thought we made clothes. Then, feeling that strong anthropological pull, I wanted to emphasize how many different cultures we represented with the postage stamps plus my Native American ethnicity, so we tried Tribal Rhythms. This was fine, to a point, until we realized everybody thought we made pow-wow jewelry. Duh. Didn’t think that one through.

Then I tried what I thought would be a simple approach, just using my last name. Nope, too hard to pronounce and nobody could remember it anywho.

Aaargh. Then, while my sister was tracing our ancestors back to the Reservation, she discovered a great-great relative from the 1800’s by the name of Cinderella Lucinda. Bam! That’s it. Humorous, fun to say, easy to remember, is part of my Native American background and represents the whimsical nature of our jewelry line.

And the best part? My entire life is a Cinderella story. If you’ve read that fairytale, then you know my life. Which as I’m typing this, brings me to my actual point. Since my life is straight out of Grimm’s imagination, why fight it? There is no need for an identity search or further diversification. If anything, focus would be best.

This is why we are transitioning from Frida Chiquita Kahlo: Everyday Anthropologist to Cinderella Lucinda: Once Upon a Time…This Week for a more streamlined approach so that everything aligns, our jewelry, photography and blog.

We still intend to share our photos and our weekly adventures, but desire cohesiveness. Pardon our dust while we remodel and we appreciate your patience as we discover who we are.

Some of you are blessed to know right away while for us, it’s as the Beatle’s describe, it’s been a “long and winding road…”

The Fifth Dimension of Heaven

“You attract what you are.” This is what Groom announced to me the other day. He read it in a book. “Therefore,” say Confucius-husband, “You must become what you desire.”

Now how does this make a lick of sense? If I’m hungry, I want to attract food to put into my belly, not become food. If my bank account needs an infusion of cash, I want to attract money. If I’m feeling unlovable, I want love.

I mean, like, duh. Haven’t you ever heard of opposites attracting? The sick need healing, not the well. The poor need alms, not the wealthy. The nakedy need clothes not the Emperor. Okay, he actually does, but you get my drift.

I am a bead. What, that’s rather disjointing, you say? An article in the newspaper once defined a bead as “anything with a hole in it.”

I have a hole in me.

This hole has inspired me to fill it in. Years ago, it began as a leak in my pocketbook. I sought two different financial counselors and when they groomed my expenditures with a fine-teethed comb, neither discovered a single penny of unnecessary outgo. I did not have what the money gurus labeled “the latte factor.”

Their analysis? I needed to increase my income. Gee, thanks, I already knew that. But it seemed that no matter what I did, no matter how frugal I became, tightened the belt, lived on a shoestring, there never was enough to cover basic expenses.

So I set my course on a journey to discover a remedy. I went on a reading rampage. I checked out every book on money, wealth, and increasing one’s income the library had on its shelves.

And boy, was I disappointed. These books hooked me in with their titles about creating what I needed, yet none of them actually gave me the secret to prosperity. I wanted to know how to get rich quick and all those stupid books did was ramble on about how money was energy and how we have to change our awareness and-- next. I kept reading, one right after the other, hoping that the next book would actually tell me something useful, but they all said the same thing, that I should meditate, get quiet and go within and observe my thoughts. %#$@&*(*&!!!

I didn’t give a flippertyjibbit about my thoughts, my energy field, my vibrational offering for crying out loud, I just wanted quick and easy steps to take so I could become more than a hundred-aire. I wanted clear and precise actions that would give me an extra zero or two on the correct side of my balance sheet.

I’ve heard of slow learners and in this area, I think the guides of heaven had to create a new sub-category of emotional retardation just for me. It has taken me years and years to finally open my mind to what the masters have been saying.

We get what we focus on, that which we appreciate, appreciates. We live in an electromagnetic universe and one of the laws of physics governing our physical reality is “like attracts like,” or “that which is like unto itself is drawn.” Paper attracts ink, a magnet attracts little metal things and trailer parks attract tornadoes. Just your basic facts of life stuff.

I resisted this for a looooooooong time (for a more accurate picture, keeping adding more o’s to the word “long,” no keep going, a few more, almost there…). Bottom line is that I wanted, needed, desired more money. I could not wrap my head around the idea that I had to start feeling and becoming prosperous to attract prosperity.

If I was reading the words right, poverty consciousness attracts MORE poverty and prosperity consciousness attracts MORE prosperity. Okay, but sputter sputter... It’s the folks who are feeling poor that need more prosperity!!!! Isn’t anybody listening?

Oops, apparently I wasn’t listening, or couldn’t understand this simple, yet profound concept.

Let’s skip ahead, shall we? A gentleman recently surprised us with a book and several downloads of a particular author he wanted us to check out. Not understanding we were supposed to read the book first, we listened to the audio files.

Oh my.

Groom and I have a fairly broad spectrum of things we are interested in, but this was a giant step out of our comfort zone.

The info on the mp3 was a guided meditation leading us up through the “10 Dimensions of Heaven.” There were things on each floor we were to see, do, clear out and receive in order to ascend to the next level.

At one point, I asked Groom if this was like a spiritual video game or a version of dungeons and dragons? In the Fourth Dimension of Heaven we were given a cloak so that we could conduct our business without being seen and in the Fifth Dimension of Heaven we were to receive a spiritual gift, perhaps a harp or a jewel-encrusted staff.

My apologies to the gentleman who sent us this stuff, but we couldn’t help giggling. Throughout the next couple of days, we’d tease each other. Groom would say, “I can see you,” and I would answer, “No you can’t, I’m invisible, can’t you see that I’m wearing my cloak?” Or, “Watch out, I’ll pop you with my jewel encrusted staff if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

Two days later, on Saturday after the Market, we took our daily perambulation around the neighborhood. We were drawn right instead of left by a handmade sign that said “Love Him Her It Them Us Yourself.” Love and inclusion, we were groovin’ on the sentiment.

Two people were sitting on the sidewalk and welcomed us. Stepping beyond the sign to stand underneath a canopy of trees, we saw a little bit of magic. “Did you notice our money tree?” they asked, pointing up. Sure enough, there were many dollar bills hanging from the branches.

Just then, a third person popped up and said in a very lovely and theatrical voice, “Welcome. You have made it to the Fifth Dimension of Heaven. You can see me now.”

Say what? You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.

I looked at Groom and Groom was already staring at me to confirm we each just heard what we thought we heard. I felt my head soften into a cartoon, becoming all rubbery as I pretend shook it from side to side, jowls and saliva swinging in slow-mo like a basset hound as I mentally cleared any possible cobwebs.

Did he just say the Fifth Dimension of Heaven? I glance around. A red carpet rolled out before us, silver, gold and copper coins piled high and thick and generously all over the place.

The man “who we could now see,” disappeared (he bee-bopped into the house for a minute) and the two people sitting on the sidewalk offered us coins from the ground and suggested we toss them into a red bowl filled with water. We were instructed to gather up all of our fears and send them into the water along with the coins. As we did this, they clapped simultaneously and shouted “NO FEAR!”

Trying to take in the scene and get a grip that we had just listened to a meditation describing the Fifth Dimension of Heaven and less than 48 hours later we walked into somebody’s little play about it, well, it was trippy!

These three people put effort into creating a sacred space. There were candles burning, incense wafting, fruit in colorful bowls and a toy dinosaur wearing booties amongst many other curious artifacts.

The third man, who had announced our arrival, reappeared and was holding, can you guess? A jewel-encrusted staff! He said something very special to us (Yeah, I think I’ll keep that part private) and then he touched us on each shoulder with the jewel-encrusted staff, much like a monarch dubbing a knight.

We were standing on a red carpet of money with dollar bills dripping overhead. In addition to the fabulous playfulness and the Technicolor alignment, there was a joyful lesson to be learned.

Turns out the two people sitting on the sidewalk, well, their “van broke down in the Third Dimension.” If you did not just laugh, there’s something wrong. Instead of whining, complaining or freaking out, they took what they had and created something enchanting out of it.

Instead of hording their last bit of cash, they rolled out the red carpet and let it loose. They tied dollar bills to the tree. In other words, they became what they wanted to attract. It worked. Groom and I were so delighted by this spectacle that we asked if we could tie some money to their tree. They asked for nothing, they just were.

All this week, I’ve been drawn back there. I’ve seen them continuing to sit outside, soaking in the late summer weather, sipping wine and visiting with passersby. On one evening stroll, I said to the man who had “knighted” us, “Hello, I can see you now.”

The look on his face was priceless. He said, “I’m so glad, I like to be seen.”

Again, he had an inner need to be visible, but instead of becoming obnoxious to get attention, he gave a gift. He created the feeling that seeing him was an honor, that one had to shift into another state of consciousness to be able to see him.

It worked. I noticed him. I remember him. He became visible.

When we have a need, we all become something in order to get that need met. Perhaps we become angry, petulant, sick, demanding, fearful; we all have our modus operandi. Since we’re going to become something anyway, why not become something that is in harmony with what we desire rather than its repelling opposite?

I just have to say, this was one of the best moments of alignment and learning. George Bernard Shaw explains why it’s good to be lighthearted about things. “People don’t stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing.”