Letter of Courage #8 – A series of drawings

I began this series of drawings in 2007, after several years of not drawing or painting, the longest I had gone since I first started. Drawing and painting have been other mediums of expression, walls to bounce off of when video or writing or photography wasn’t quite the medium to capture what I was trying to share.

The last year has been such a challenge physically, as the doctors work excruciatingly slow, and sometimes, not at all, to figure out whether an initial diagnosis in October of 2008 of RSD, a rare nerve disease, was correct. The process has been terribly eye opening as I passed through the health care system that seems structurally compromised, a weight bearing on me as a patient that I had never in a million years expected. The physical pain was exacerbated by the pain of having a rare condition that not many understand in a system intended for diseases that can be cataloged and billed out. Without much health insurance, and no disability insurance, I have had to manage healing as best I could. Its a journey that has required self-examination of health habits in myself, and adopting any new habit that can help in the healing process.

The healing of my spirit from the injury when the needle hit my nerve was another journey. Drawing became my tool, a way for me to distract my mind from the high pain levels I was experiencing. A drawing often took a week or more, with me adding a bit here and there when I felt well enough. Every time I sat at the table, I’d open up my drawing book, an outlet for me to distract from the crippling, burning pain in my legs, and arms. I believe the drawings, which I see now as possible initial sketches for future paintings, has been a salve in the recovery process.

I share them now with the hope they can be curative or healing for others who experience RSD or any chronic pain issues or who are moved in any way by the images.

I want to thank Xavier Quijas Yxayotl for use of the song Music for The Full Moon, from his CD Pearl Moon. Xavier is an inspiration for me, after several meetings at events, I have come to admire Xavier’s music and the hard work he and his wife, Candace, put into sharing music for the people with the people. Support his work with the purchase of a CD and enjoy the tunes that have rocked people at concerts around the world!!

http://www.yxayotl.com/cd.html

N.I.C.E. and Red Poppy Art House presents

I was introduced to Todd Brown, founder of The Red Poppy Art House located in the Mission District of San Francisco, by Sherwood Chen, with A.C.T.A. (Alliance for California Traditional Arts). I was very taken with The Red Poppy space, the couches and window seats, a vase of flowers on the wicker table, the energetic and poetic paintings by Todd Brown that race across the room walls. There was something very nice about the space, and I was in need of something nice. It had been a long summer.

When Todd mentioned the N.I.C.E. project, I was intrigued by the collective nature of the group, and its mission of community engagement written in its name, Neighborhood Initiative for Community Engagement. The goal was to create a project for the monthly walking art tour of the Mission, known as M.A.P.P., started six years ago. Each month different artists, musicians, performers, and community artists engage the larger Mission neighborhood with gallery exhibitions, street performance, and art shared in a range of mediums.

August M.A.P.P., the N.I.C.E. group decided to transform a garage space into Rosie Cheeks Gallery, with its focus on sustainability. Gathered together that chilly evening were artists, musicians, poets, and filmmakers, creating a blend of sensory experiences. Had this event happened in a cultural space, it would have taken months to plan and organize.

What was so nice about the experience was watching a group come together to create an evening of magical transformation, an intersection between art and community, a chance to make things nice for an evening.

Short Essay published in Talking to Goddess – Book Available Now

Talking with Goddess Cover

I was invited by D’vorah Green to write a short essay for Talking with Goddess which offers the voices of 72 women from a range of traditions, sharing their visions on spirituality.

Copies can be purchased directly at http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/talking-to-goddess/5378663

Please contact me directly at info@flordemielfilms.com if you are interested in having a reading of my essay from the book.

Reviews:

Blessings, invocations, chants, prayers, oriki and discussions with Spirit from 72 women in 25 different spiritual traditions around the world: “Talking to Goddess is a cacophony of whispers, prayers, and sweet sound vibrations reflecting the many ways everyday women can communicate with the divine essence of nature…”
- Chief Luisah Teish, author of Jambalaya and Carnival of the Spirits – California.

“This cornucopia of blessings and chants is both an excellent resource for use in rituals and a powerful introduction to the many faces of Goddess.” – Dr. Judith Plaskow, Professor, Religious Studies, Manhattan College and author, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective – New York.

“An inspiring collection!” – Nane Jordan, mother, scholar, birth attendant, artist – British Columbia.

“I feel such a sense of centering calm and power reading through the prayer poems…” – Mary Beth Moser, author, Honoring Darkness: Exploring the Power of Black MadonnasI

Girrrls on a Mission! Video

Take a look at this short 9 minute video I shot and edited. Please download video first before playing for maximum viewing pleasure!

Sharing one’s feelings, even in writing, is never easy. As I began reviewing the footage from Girrrls on a Mission, I heard the strong voices of girls and young women standing up to challenges they faced. Some of the girls speak of sisters and secrets, the stuff of all children, other girls share deep and difficult experiences, fears and worries, some which may be shocking to hear. It takes a lot of courage to share one’s experience, and, learning to turn an experience into a story is without a doubt, a craft. I am inspired by the girl’s courage.

The Brava Theater offered a series of writing workshops taught by the screenwriter and authoress, Josefina Lopez, who penned the wildly successful screenplay, Real Women have Curves. I remember attending an HBO/NALIP screening of the film here in San Francisco as Real Women launched. Sitting in the audience, I remember being immensely inspired to believe the real stories of women can be told and make a difference, and for the first time in a long time, the film, its cast, and the story, were entirely accessible and reflective of my curves and turns in life.

So, when I heard that Josefina Lopez was offering writing workshops in San Francisco, I knew I had to find a way to go to the workshops. The flyer said the workshops had been underwritten, and were free to interested women and young girls! I was amazed, and grateful since often, as a single person raising a child, workshops are just beyond my price range. The workshop’s accessibility gave me the inspiration to give the workshop all I had.

Josefina was an amazing teacher, and person. Driving up each week from Los Angeles, rain or shine, blazing fall fires or not, Josefina offered us inspiration as writers, prepared us with practical information about screen writing, and took the time to really get to know each person, her strengths and weakness, her dreams and fears, and listen to the many drafts we brought week after week. Josefina took the time to listen to every story, and find its rough gem to be refined with more writing.

When Josefina mentioned her youth group was having their final performance, I saw a way to repay Josafina for her hard work, and give something back to the Brava Theater and the funders underwriting the workshops. I grabbed my camera. This nine minute video is a short developed from that 40 minute program.

Subsequent to the workshop, I had the chance to connect again with Josafina at the NALIP Annual Conference, just as her book, Hungry Woman in Paris, which she had been writing during the workshop, was on its way to the presses. Josefina’s book came out this year!

Josefina Lopez has been an amazing role model to several generations of Latina writers. She has a determination, a spirit, that does not quit. Josefina pushed me to see beyond my limitations, to nix any excuse, and push on through like a Real Woman. Mil gracias mujer!

Just two technical notes: 1) This short film was shot on my old one chip camera, please forgive the quality. I am now shooting on a three chip camera so shortly you’ll be able to see new work from that new camera. 2) Please download the short in its entirety, otherwise, the film slows during transitions and appears choppy.

Tidbits

When Nature Speaks, and Smiles

As the summer is but a glimpse in the last of the summer fog, so begins the look ahead to Fall. Editing is moving along, I am making do with this current status of recovery from a nerve injury to sort through material shot, pulling together some short stories in video and photos.

I am excited to make good use of the journalism training I had last Spring with Poynter University by focusing on exploring the world close at hand. I have a new multimedia series I am developing for launch in October, creating some of my first online multimedia reporting. Over the summer, I have been trying to get out more locally, meeting new people, connecting with other artists in the city, getting to better know the world close around me now that I am so homebound.

My series, Letter of Courage, continues…I wish I could say the series is over, or rather, my interaction with health care as it is currently were over, but, the challenge continues as I seek ways to heal the nerve injury outside what my insurance is making possible.

I am starting to open up a little more about my experience in health care, after an injury at a hospital unleashed a forced look at what so many Americans are currently, and have been going through. And which I now experience. I have had medication and treatment and tests denied, and been told different things by different doctors who do not speak among themselves. A state investigation into an illness that I never had, rather than the injury that occurred. I have been sent away from treatment, and then told I stayed away too long so my case is not an emergency. I have had doctors look me in the eye to say my desperate pleas for answers to medical questions were breaking the “patient doctor relationship.” I actually had a “specialist” whom I had waited eight months to finally be able to see, not ask me about what was going on physically, nor told me, or knew, what my test results revealed, but instead, asked me whether I had filed a lawsuit (I had not. Unfortunately, I lost a business client account as a result of missing key meetings that day).

The experience I had was witnessed by many, all whom who have said how helpless they have felt as one after another promises were broken. We don’t have to feel helpless. We can all stand up today and say we don’t want profit motive to run our health care system. A commentator recently asked, ‘where is the value-added? What does the insurance company bring to the table, to justify 36 cents of every health care dollar?’

Please don’t feel helpless. Raise your voices for rational, national health care reform that dispenses with the arms and lies, and gets down to the basic question: do we provide the same level of quality care to all Americans? Even those who have private insurance yet whose insurer won’t treat them because its too expensive? Those too poor to afford better or any insurance at all? I wonder, is this right as a nation to allow so many millions of Americans to go without or limited in getting health care access?

Here are a few photo tidbits from the last few days….

Walking Through Healthcare

Red #2

Front, Red Poppy

When the Spirits Go Walking, from the series, Moon Studies, San Francisco

Haitus

Through the Mirror of the Past, A Wave Home, 2009, Catherine Herrera

Thank you for all those who return and view the Sweet Entertainment blog. I hope this summer is good to you.

I have been on a hiatus for the last several weeks, a moment of recalibration. In some traditions, there is a day in the year called the “day outside of time” – I have remembered this well, because my birthday falls on the day after – a fact that has been interpreted to me as the Head of the Serpent, the first day of the coiling snake that is the number count of days making up year in the Mayan and Mixeca calendars.

I have spent the last little while on hiatus, “outside time.” Outside my normal routine and for the first time, in a long time, alone for a long stretch of time. I’ve enjoyed the space in time to consider Sweet Entertainment’s Fall programming line-up , during which I will add a layer of multimedia reporting and musings.

I took a moment to look back to my business plan for Flor de Miel Media and to chart progress towards the goals set down in paper. The economy put my plans on “slow”, yet, thankfully, movement is still forward.

Living many years in Mexico as an adult, I learned to appreciate forward movement, and recognize Rhythm Of Time. Often, life plans take longer than expected, sometimes expectations are shifted and transform us into new ways of thinking. When I would feel furthest from my artistic goals or with less time than I had hoped, I would stop and ask what rhythm was present. Respecting the rhythm of time is important. So my guidepost became assessing whether I was moving forward.

Sometimes its fast and sometimes its slow, forward.

I grew up thinking I was in charge of time, a resource to be organized, boxed, checked, lived by. When I walked to a different clock, I saw that even if I could wrangle time in just the way I want, its an illusion. I think about this in relation to the environment, and global warming. Internally, intuitively, I know, no matter how much I wish that we could go back as a world to a time when we believed we could ignore the signs, that’s not happening because the rhythm of time is different now. Our collective intuition is saying the same. Take a moment outside of time, hear what your intuition tells is your movement.

This is no cry of defeat, its a rally around all the young people who now know the difference, and push us to move forward, and lead us to believe we can save our planet. We can do it. Asking intelligent questions is not a crime, its a responsibility. In my opinion.

Whether I wanted it so or not, part of my time outside of time has been spent involved with doctors, hospitals, and medical insurance. Well, rather, the lack thereof. I have not posted a Letter of Courage in a while, in part, I frankly, some days don’t have the energy to be shocked that I have fallen into an abyss called health care in the U.S. Left to my own to correct a disease I, as an artist, know nothing about. Last week, I was asked in a doctor’s appointment whether I had filed a lawsuit from a woman who did not know about my case, but enough to point out all the “other ways” I might have gotten this disease. If I indeed have it since I can’t even get the tests to rule it out and find the cause. That day required a moment outside of time, fo’ sure.

I will be posting more in the series Letter of Courage, and share some of the lessons I am learning, both about health care in the U.S., as well as about myself. LoC is designed as a recording of a process. As access to health care slips away, I turn to my own healing power, and choose to empower myself.

What if doctors could be doctors again?

Healing my Arm, 2009, photo by Catherine Herrera

I think a moment outside of time on the health care issue is needed. Step back if you will, take a moment outside of time – retreat to houses of prayer, circles of supporters, and community blocks, and ask yourself what you intuition says about health care reform for our country. Ask in silence of time, what does your intuition tell you is right for yourself, then offer it to your neighbor by understanding why its so important everyone is covered.

When I hear about the 1.1 million dollars spent a day to fight against the will of 76% of the public for health care reform, or a campaign against the will of the American people from servants to the dollars raised from aligned industries, I just wonder,
WHY CAN’T WE VOTE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM? WHY DO LOBBYISTS GET A PRIVATE VOTE AND WE DO NOT HAVE A WEIGHT IN?

ONE PAYER. ONE PAYER. ONE PRAYER.

Hearing the Past, images from the continuing series by Catherine Herrera

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Where Neighborhoods Grow Up

Versions of Green

Close to My Heart

Presence

Love

Blue for Times Past