Tora Estep
“Golden Cocoon”
Acrylic on paper
Response

Morning Plea
By Lisa Bloom
Inspiration piece

I skipped my morning lecture, you were wrapped
within my golden quilt’s cocoon, I chose
to stay there too. You stretched your legs, your toes
brushed past my shins. A budding lily, trapped

in glass and city water, lightly tapped
by sunlight, sat behind us. You proposed
I skip my morning lecture, you were wrapped
around my will. I couldn’t much oppose

your crinkled face’s plea to stay. I mapped
my breathing’s frequency to yours, then closed
my eyes, dismissed my conscience, not imposed
by rueful thoughts of plans and schedules scrapped.
I skipped my morning lecture. You were wrapped
around my will, and I could not oppose.

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Tora Estep
Acrylic paint on paper
Response

A Sorry Scoop
By Ash Martins
Inspiration piece

You abandoned us like a stray ice cream scoop
dropped on a picnic table at the park
Sticky, greedy, grubby
hands seeking fresh novelty and adventure elsewhere
leaving sweetness and responsibility far behind

(O! The ants rejoice at such neglect!)

I gather a queer kind of comfort up all around me
and warm myself to the core,
steeped in the beautiful knowledge that
my efforts would never have been enough
I never could have been enough for you

(And so it goes!)

Yet, I am more than you could ever try to stifle,
Because I contain multitudes
and magic, and then some!
But you, you are a neglected,
melty ice cream cone at the park

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tora Estep
“Tribute to Lady Day”
18 in. x 24 in., acrylic on watercolor paper
Response

To Be a Singer
By Andrea Dye
Inspiration piece

If I didn’t make myself cringe that would be a more plausible goal. I don’t care for big concerts. All the drunk people and the fanatics are a drawback, not to mention the parking! But intimate venues with a charismatic and talented singer are a precious experience. There’s much to say for a single performer who controls the microphone, has everyone’s attention and delivers magnetic entertainment. What a gig! If I could sing, I’d dress up in flamboyant costumes and wear over-the-top makeup. I’d adorn my hair with feathers and dance in glittery shoes while flirting with the audience, tip jar in tow.

On my last trip to Paris, I stumbled upon a quaint little… I’m kidding I would never write a sentence like that. A friend who lives in St. Michel took me to a bar on one of those cool side-streets you only ever see in movies and I fell in love. She wanted beer, I wanted chocolate cake, and we both wanted to smoke outside under the heaters. Our waiter was Frenchly attractive, a bit dirty and by American standards only familiar with the idea of customers being the ones doing the waiting. Lucky for us, we didn’t care. Two hours and forty Euros later we decided this was our favorite spot for nighttime girl talk.

A few nights later, with her husband watching the baby, we returned to the same spot, got the same table and the same waiter. Music from inside spilled through the windows and it was the perfect French cliché. The later it got the more people arrived and by midnight there was a line of people waiting to get in. It’s fun to watch tourists drink and weave their way down cobblestone streets in heels. What is going on in there? How did we pick this unusual hot spot? Aren’t we just genius! As far as I could tell there was a woman singing and someone playing piano. They could have been Nazi songs for all we knew and then we heard a familiar Beatles melody. When a crowd of drunken Parisians are singing Let It Be it’s time to go home.

Another week went by and my boyfriend from Denver flew in for a few days to join me on vacation. Imagine my glee when I got to gloat about finding a sexy night spot with warm gooey dark chocolate cake. We abandoned my baby-ridden friend and bee-lined for said spot. Since someone doesn’t smoke, unless he’s really drinking, we went inside for a table.

The noises we’d heard outside didn’t do it justice! Reminded me of a Baz Luhrmann movie. Our waitress was dressed for a night in Las Vegas, there may have been 150 people in a room that should hold 50 and the piano player was a carnival caricature drawing come-to-life. I like to think his name is Philippe. He stomped and spat as he sang, flopping and bouncing on the bench he had undoubtably drenched with sweat by the end of his first song. To say Philippe was animated is an understatement. And to say I was jealous is probably overstating the obvious.

While enjoying the romance of our 12-inch table and the freedom of being English-speaking (so you may as well be invisible), I couldn’t help but imagine it was Mademoiselle Andrea singing and keeping all those drunkards’ arms swinging in the air with pride. If I could sing in a bar like this, I could be discovered and hanging platinum records in my Malibu mansion in no time. Philippe could do it all: sing, play piano and make slapstick faces without looking absurd. He was pure entertainment if I ever saw it…until… (we’ll call her) Jacqueline started her set.

I’ve never been gay, but I can succumb to a spell every now and then. I was lured into thinking she was the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Ohhh, Jacqueline! We both have long curly hair that frizzes in this humidity, we could understand one another with no words between us. The language of frizz has far deeper a meaning than any words derived from Latin. No, don’t look at me Jacqueline, I probably have some creepy look on my face. Remember to smile at the boyfriend or he’ll ask what I’m thinking about. What a great singer, isn’t this fun? I’m so glad you’re here, honey.

I give her credit; her voice was impressive until she tried some American songs, and I was shocked back to the reality where calling someone a lounge singer is a universal putdown. When I could hold it in no longer, I mentioned she was beautiful and got the obligatory “No, babe, she’s not for me” response from across the table. All the more to fuel my fire. She had me hooked and I couldn’t look away. That brings me to my favorite point in many nights where I realize that no one knows I’m not drinking and anything goes.

We sang along loudly to Beach Boys and Beatles tunes. Nah nah, I know the words and you guys are all messing it up, what a silly thing to be proud of. In retrospect, not bad for people who don’t speak English. The tide pulled a U-turn and Jacqueline turned over the floor to an older man I could not lust after. Although Philippe was still playing, his energy was dying and I could tell Jacqueline was tiring with feigned enthusiasm and too much wine. Not wanting to let the perfection go I thought it better to leave than see the truth. They were just people at work and we were dumb American tourists lapping it up. Why is the world so harsh? And when can I see her again?

If I were younger maybe I’d audition for American Idol. Maybe I could move to Paris and get a job as the American singer and the French could adore me the way I adored Jacqueline. There aren’t many times in life you remember with such fondness, as I do, that night. And there aren’t many times you can ever recreate that sort of thing. That’s why it’s called love at first sight.

If I were a wealthy French banker I’d sweep Jacqueline off her ballet flats and pay for her anti-frizz conditioning treatments. I’d bring cafe and croissants to her in bed on Sunday afternoons and sing to her until she begged me to stop while laughing and spilling jam on the bedspread. It’s hopefully clear I’m not going to move to Paris, graduate from finance school and do that, but it’s fun to pretend that someday I could be with Jacqueline again and I could do for her in return something wonderful she did for me. I’d love to be a singer.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tora Estep
“The Harvest”
Preparatory thumbnail sketch, graphite on paper
Response

We Roar
By Natascha Dea Burdeinei
Inspiration piece

Rage battles disappointment; anger and frustration swirl and bubble up again. The scream I need to feel coming out of me in a pelting windstorm is shrunk down for city living as I plunge my face into a sink full of water to roar—in a postage stamp of a bathroom. Tears fall on my wet face as my girlfriends text. One, then another. From all corners of the United States. Women, wounded, ferociously enraged, grieving. Their Nation chipping away at them, their daughters, and granddaughters.

Women carry the promise of two generations inside us at birth and throughout our thirty or forty-some years of reproductive viability. And as I feel a rage rise up in me toward the white men who make up just 30% of our population in the United States and yet manage to exercise minority rule in 42 state legislatures, the House, the Senate, SCOTUS, and statewide offices across the United States* actively using this power to strip their female, Black, brown, and LGBTQ neighbors of rights and liberties, I know it isn’t just my rage.

It is the rage of the two generations of women I carried briefly before my body failed me.

It is the rage of my grandmother. My grandmother, who carried my mother and me while stationed in Germany serving in our armed forces.

It is the rage of her grandmothers who lived under the constant threat of Russian violence and genocide in the Pale of Settlement. They couldn’t have known their first-generation American granddaughter would join the US Army to fight for them during World War II.

I plunge my face back into the cold water to scream some more. The salt from my tears mixes into the water reminding me we are our life source. The bringers and birthers of all human life. Our bodies and souls are bound and gagged, raped, abused, scarred, murdered or imprisoned, and legislated because of it. And we roar. Fuck this shit.

A clap of thunder rings out overhead. The storm is here. And I will rage into it, shooting flaming arrows of fury and a soft but strong heart while speaking words bolstered by my mothers into the wind for the thirty percent.

“We’re coming for you,” the gales of wind scream as they transport my warning across the mountains, cornfields, rivers, dales, forests, hollows, and beaches of this Nation.

“We’re coming for YOU.”

“WE’RE COMING FOR YOU.”

“Now!”

* source: Reflective Democracy Campaign

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tora Estep
“Resisting Expansion”
Collage and acrylic on watercolor paper
Response

Re: Things Governing the Size of My Universe
By Shannon Brown
Inspiration piece

The lenses that I look through, that tell me what is possible and govern the extent of things that I’m able to do, come in two types, the physically possible filter and the emotionally possible filter.

The physically possible has to do with physical laws, the conventions that those of us who set up the rules of the planet agreed on. We agree that one can’t be in more than one place at a time, that time itself is perceived as moving in the same direction for everyone on the playing field, and so on. These rules apply to everyone who buys a ticket and steps onto the tilting, whirling planet. If it transgresses the laws of physics, you can’t do it. Pretty basic.

The second set of lenses is concerned with, within the grand scheme of physical potential, what I am emotionally capable of doing. If an action demands that I create conflict, or that I do something that might possibly make me a “bad person,” in the unfortunately broad and looming definition enshrined in my overgrown ethics center, the antilock brakes on the possibilities are activated faster than I can blink. That action then falls squarely into the realm of the utterly impossible. (Sometimes it’s so abrupt I could swear I feel the airbags deploying.)

You’d expect that the first one, the limits of physical reality, would be the filter that most resisted expansion, but oddly, this is not the case. It’s the stuff you can physically accomplish in the world that has been expanding in fits and starts ever since I wandered into a meditation class in 1985. I have seen and done things that I never could have imagined, and this is one of my greatest sources of joy. It is the second set of limits that make up the more daunting obstacle.

The irony is not lost on me that the emotional filters on the possible really ought to be the ones crumbling in the face of years of meditation and therapy. The only untried strategy I know of to overcome them is, rather than fueling them with my resistance, is to love them unconditionally. To treat them with gratitude and say, thank you, lenses, for the times that you saved me. It’s such a crazy idea… that it just might work.

I’ll let you know.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tora Estep
Oil on canvas
Response

Destined to Prevail:
A short story about earthlings, sometime around now
By Darice M. Jones
Inspiration piece

Bica sat at the shore of the water between continents, and began to reflect, as the tide rolled in and back out like a big, swelling, complete breath. She thought about how just an hour ago she had healed her brother, just by touching him and envisioning his wellness. It was happening. The change was really happening. She started to write in her journal about all she had witnessed so far.

We blundered. We let them hypnotize us with everything from small slights of hand that obscured the real trick, to big bombs that destroyed thousands upon thousands of lives – human, river, stream, earth, birds, trees, plant medicine, ocean life. Damn near everything. They used their echo machines to blast the message of their power – and our lack thereof – from any speaker that could put out sound.

We participated in their worldview as much as we fought it, and that was the biggest blunder of all. We struggled to hold a singular vision of a better world. We had forgotten the world before genocides, before vast wealth built on kidnapping and torture and violently free labor. There was a world before.

We had forgotten even the grass under our feet, the air that filled our lungs, the water that made up the bulk of our bodies. In the way an ailing elder might be able to see that a person is standing in front of them, but not recognize that person to be the one that loves and cares for them. We hadn’t forgotten without a fight, but within one. The self-proclaimed power brokers of the world had devised and passed down such broad but elusive means of conditioning the masses that we could hardly catch our breath, let alone stay in touch with our center. Nowadays,

We cheered for money when anyone we loved or felt connected to got access to a lot of it.

                           We quietly slow clapped for acts of valor and integrity.

We listened to people with money, as if having it instantly endowed wisdom.

                           We often failed to hear our own inner knowing.

We knew the names of celebrities, their spouses, and even their kids.

                           We often didn’t know the names and stories of our own ancestors, who fought for life.

We let them normalize the big beautiful house that sits next to hungry people, unhoused people, and ill people – as though there is nothing to be done.                         

                          We often refused responsibility for our communities, our species, and the earth itself.

But, even with all of these mistakes we’d made, even with our struggle to find and stay true to life, even with our conflicted thinking about our responsibility to ourselves, to each other, and to the earth that sustains us – a global community of life-centered optimists is reclaiming the narrative. They’re out hear retraining themselves and every open-minded who has even an inkling of hope. They’re embodying the bold stance that things can be transformed to the benefit of every living thing. The key to their success so far – they have a plausible vision for a better expression of life on earth. And, they’re more passionate than even the so-called power brokers who got our world into this depressing state of affairs through generations of fear-based “progress.”

In the coming world, people will no longer have to choose between living a comfortable life, and living a life of integrity. People worldwide will no longer be subject to resource extraction and the intense poverty that it produces. People will not have to worship money, status, beauty, popularity, and the quest to be better than their neighbors. People will no longer have to judge, belittle, and tell themselves stories about the character of people who experience poverty in order to justify their own unearned access to resources. Because in the coming world, the transition will be as irresistible as being truly loved.

The intense souls who are leading this global visioning and actualizing effort know with a deep certainty that tapping into the vibration of life itself eclipses the hypnotic pull of superiority complexes, overindulgences, and stolen resources providing luxurious but vapid lifestyles on stolen land. And they’re moving forward unafraid, because they know that in quantum terms, a higher vibration produces more favorable results.

As the dream of the folks whose fear & loathing lead humanity to this complex, conflicted mess dissolves – a new elevated vibe is emerging – and its unrelenting beauty is going to nourish the entire world.

Bica put down her notebook and let her layered tears become one with the ocean.

Written By Darice M. Jones

In the Year Wangari Mathaai © 2022

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tora Estep, untitled, oil on canvas

Response

Rissa Miller

Inspiration

Stargazing

You’re considering a tattoo on your shoulder
in what I like to think of as the Orion system,
located between here and here on your skin.
My universe, your skin, all alive, sweet,
the multiverse of you-ness.
A rose, you say, or perhaps a chain of ivy?
An alien invader of my eternal constellations,
the freckles that trail your arms and neck.
Recognizable patterns and forms create legends across you.
Often my mouth leads me to the system of Andromeda.
Will the sword of Perseus cut me down, I wonder
as I glide along your spine, breathtaking distinctive flecks
already marking you, lovelier that the goddess herself.
Hers, a story of a beauty brought down by boasts.
The night sky holds 88 such tales.
Your body, though, so many more, each ever new to explore.
Centaur points his arrow, and you ask
What about a heart or a word, something with meaning?
I try to imagine it etched in ink on the cosmos.
At the edge of your neck, my lips connect stars, you to me.
Stargazing into the darkness, I encounter ruling planet Venus
as you settle on infinity.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Tora Estep, “Abandoned,” charcoal, pastel, and collage on paper

Response

Pippa Possible, “Nervously, Tenderly,” erasure technique and paper cutting, using pages of a vintage novel; chair, acrylic paint, sticky tape (part of a larger installation “A Game of Hide & Seek”)

Inspiration

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.