Thursday, October 16, 2008

pictures instead of words


I can't seem to write much this time of year. Maybe it's the overwhelming cacophony of words, opinions and predictions that are filling the air. Who needs even more? Maybe it's been a time to focus in a different way. I've been making art and getting lettuce seeds sprouting. Maybe it's been a time to focus too on my son and hearth and home. There's been long talks and a new ease between us. In any case, I'll let pictures be the bulk of my words.

My friend Jeremy was beginning to actively die at this time last year. This was the moment we all began to face that he was crossing over. I was painfully aware last October that this year I would be writing his name in frosting on a sugar skull.

This week I am finishing up on the spirit bottle I have been making him. It has on it a slew of beads, baubles, shells and stones that his family and friends dedicated to him. On it too are the buttons his mother wore constantly up until his death.





What is remembered lives. There's a lot of living and remembering going on around me. Here is my altar...still in process.

And here are the sugar skulls, just beginning to be decorated.

Soon, they will all have names on them. If you have a name of someone dear, let me know. There's plenty of skulls this year. There's plenty of dead to remember.

I'm hoping these dead all have some pull at the election. I know Jeremy does.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

So very beautiful! I am so honored that you are giving this gift to me in honor of my most wonderful son. He would - and I'm sure does - love it! Bless you,
Love, Sherry

Michele Jackson said...

Hi,

I am guessing you had already planned to do one for Cora. If not, please do one for her. She kept a sugar skull on her altar year round.
Michele

Anonymous said...

Please make a sugar skull for my dearest friend Barb Nelson, who passed recently. She was a warm, loving healer and priestess with a beautiful relationship to Goddess.

Anonymous said...

My Dearest Oak,

I have been missing you terribly these last few days. These photos remind me of how long it has been sense I have been in your beautiful home. Mark and I do have to come out sometime soon for our West Coast Tour.

Thank you so much for offering a sugar skull for our dear dead friends. Would you please put Stewart Scofield's name on one of the sugar skulls for me. He was one of my dear friends who died suddenly this year. Stewart was one of the co-founders of RFD Magazine, (one of the first radicle queer spirit, rural fag periodicals ever published).

I wish we could be together for this Halloween Holiday. It would have been grand to have had you join us at this Autumn's Samhain Earth Conclave Gathering. But, I hear other celebrations will be filling your spare time this year.

May abundance and joy flow through our lives like a wild untamed river.

Love and Kisses

Anonymous said...

I respecfully and with much gratitude request a sugar skull with the name Nannette ... my late mother who passed from cancer 11 years ago this month in much pain and with much fear.

Blessings

Sharon Jackson said...

Hi Oak, what a wonderful bunch of pictures. Can you make a sugar skull in honour of my mother, Merle Jackson? She died of breast cancer in 2005 after 30 years of being cancer-free. Sigh. I still miss her every day.
Sigh

Marjie said...

Please, could you make a sugar skull for my dear friend Margaret McCarthy who died suddenly two weeks ago.
Marjie

Yarrow said...

Beautiful spirit bottle. And a beautiful altar. I am just beginning mine. Blessings.

Cat C-B (and/or Peter B) said...

I thought you might like to know that I linked to this post in today's the roundup of Samhain stories over at MetaPagan.

Blessed Samhain.

Sulle sponde del Galeso said...

Hi great reading your bloog