Rebirth

Today is a particularly potent day in the life. At the moment I am sitting at Whole Foods, feeling safe and grateful. I just narrowly escaped a tree falling on my car during a wild thunderstorm here in Washington, D.C.

The day began by moving most of my things into storage in the basement of the house I have been living in in Takoma Park, Maryland for the past five month. It’s been so very lovely to share this house with some wonderful people, and I have grown to really love Maryland and the D.C. metro area. I feel glad to be here, and there are so many wonderful people here who I now call friends.

After I put my boxes in the basement, I loaded up my car with the things that I anticipate wanting to have with me during the month of July, and I left the house feeling extremely somber and apprehensive, tender and vulnerable.

What does the future hold? We never can really know. And yet, some things are more predictable, dependable, stable, and secure than others. If I am paying rent to live somewhere, there is a much higher chance that my place to live is stable, secure. No longer am I in this situation. I have again taken a giant leap of faith and now find myself blowing with the wind in this magnificent, magical Universe.

After I left the house, I parked my car a few blocks away and walked down to the creek that I love so much. Nearly every day, I wake up and walk along Sligo Creek. I have enjoyed so many hours writing and meditating, phone conversations, walks with friends, and walks in solitude along this gorgeous area of Takoma Park. And today I bid her farewell. For now. I sat on a rock along the creek and I cried. Deep sadness washed over me. I felt very, very alone in a very big world.

In one hand I held a leaf, and in the other a piece of wood. Both pieces were from dear friends on whom I have leaned upon this past month as I have walked this transitional transformational path. These sisters have been rocks of support as I made the decision to leave the house I was living in and to trust that I will continue to be cared for as I walk in the metaphorical darkness.

And in this moment it was time to release these pieces back into their natural setting. I released them to affirm my existence as a sovereign being here on the Earth. I am so grateful for my friends and family. And for all the forces of Nature that support me as I walk this long, beautiful road, as I journey from place to place, following my heart and intuition, even when the logical part of me would rather I live a more conventional life.

And yet, a sovereign being I am, and this is a very empowering piece of truth to affirm, especially as I am finding myself once again “on The Road.” The Road is a very familiar place to me, and it’s also a place that I had not anticipated revisiting so soon.

After my most recent chapter of gypsy living, I was exhausted and desperate to get “off The Road.” Please God, please let me live somewhere, let me have a normal life with a home and a community and steady work.

And I had it. For one fleeting moment, it feels. And here I am again, my car is full of my possessions, and tonight I will sleep at my friends’ house in Bethesda, Maryland. I am so blessed to have such wonderful, loving, supportive friends. So very blessed.

So I sit here feeling incredibly vulnerable. I have set my intentions time and time again, writing them down and speaking them aloud. I feel in my heart that God hears me when I pray, that the Universe supports me in manifesting my desires, that Nature is organizing something magnificent on my behalf and on the behalf of the Whole.

So just be patient, Erin, I have told myself time and time again. Trust. Allow life to unfold in all its stunning perfection, it’s divine design, its cosmically magical alignment.

And yet, there is a part of me that is trembling. “This is not what I want!” part of me is crying. I want a home, a community, a stable life! I want to know where I will sleep, work, record my music, be with my friends. I want to know that I am safe and secure and protected.

The truth is that I AM safe and secure and protected. In each and every moment, life is exactly as it should be. This is absolute truth, and yet there is a part of me that feels confused.

And then there is a part of me that is remembering that I chose this. I asked for a magnificent life, and this is what I am creating with each and every breath.

I saw Woody Allen’s new film “Midnight in Paris” the other night and it really touched my heart. I saw these fabulous artists, writers, and musicians from the 1920’s hanging out at Gertrude Stein’s house in Paris, and it stirred something in my heart.

I want to live in a community of artists like this. I want to have friends around me with whom I am creating and recording music, with whom I am working with on lots of different co-creative collaborative projects. My desire is to create art, beauty, events, and music to uplift, inspire, heal, and connect people with their innermost Selves.

I have so many ideas, dreams, inspired aspirations. I am here to raise the vibration here on the Earth. I am here to dream a more and more beautiful world into being. I am here to express and create and dance and sing and live life as the celebration that it is. I am here to radiate joy and shine my light and sing my heart’s song.

I lay down my life on the sacred altar before God, and ask that I be used as a divine vessel of grace, inspiration, Love, and pure joy.

And I ask that the support organize itself around me, so that I can work in the way that I love to work, so that I can sing and feel grounded and supported in a beautiful, loving, creative community of like-hearted souls.

This is what I am creating.

I will be staying with my friends in Bethesda for a few nights, and after this I know not where I will go. I know not how the Universe will enfold me in Her warm and loving arms. I have leapt and I will be caught. I already AM caught, and I stay grounded in this truth as I stay grounded in the present moment of Now.

A great story is being written; I am entering a dramatically more epic and beautiful chapter than I can even imagine.

I love living in the D.C. area, and I am also completely open to relocating again. I am a free bird, ready to go wherever the divine flow carries me. I am moving into a beautiful new space, perhaps a house sitting opportunity which will give me some time to work on my creative projects. This part of the story is yet to be written.

I am open and I am ready. We are living in extraordinarily times here on Planet Earth. It’s 2011 and so much is changing so quickly. We are accelerating into a New Paradigm in which Love and Truth regain their rightful place as the main focus of our attention. And I am here to be a part of it. I am here to sing my song, to play my note, to share my heart and gifts with the world in the way that only I can.

I have been cleared for takeoff, and all of last month I was speeding down the runway. I now take flight, and I am grateful for the prayers and blessings and grace and miracles that fill my heart and my life.

Thank you for being a part of this journey. I am here to reflect back to you your own divine purpose, and your own beauty and light.

Can you see it?

It’s so, so beautiful.

Star Bales

My friend and yoga teacher Sue Berkey recently created one of the most stunning public art installments I have ever seen.

Art has this incredible power to take us out of our "normal" day to day routine, and into a new and wondrous land, within and without. Art expands our awareness, inspiring us by reminding us of life's infinite possibilities. And Sue's Star Bales are fantastic vehicles for such a magical journey.

The night that I first saw Sue's installment was after the first yoga class I took from her. It was a gift from my dear friend Naoki. After class, she told us that she had created some art, and that it was in a farm field just outside of town. So we drove out there, under the full moon, and when we saw it we looked at one another in amazement. It was such a surreal experience, to see a gigantic star-shaped hay bale sitting in the farm field.

I parked the car and we both jumped out began to run full speed toward the first Star Bale, and then saw a second. And as if this were not thrilling enough, we then saw the third!!! We both began to howl at the moon, prancing around the field and rejoicing like wild fools.

I returned to see them the following day, and have posted a few photos with the Star Bales in the daylight above.

If you are in Iowa, I highly recommend checking them out if you haven't already. The directions are below.

Shortly after the Star Bales were placed in their home in the field, Mo Ellis wrote a great article in the Iowa Source, which I will post here:

Berkey's Bales

Making Hay While the Stars Shine

by Mo Ellis

Sue Berkey's Star Bales are an unexpected site in an alfafa field just north of Fairfield, Iowa. (Photo by Joe Stanski, browncow108@lisco.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Who knew something as utilitarian and labor intensive as baling hay could be sculpted into fine art? Nothing prepared me for Sue Berkey’s Star Bales when I found them installed in a field just north of Fairfield on 185th Street. Nature lights this gentle rolling farm road with cool, delicate shades of pink and gold at sunrise and finishes her display with dramatic gold, reds, and violets at sunset.

Sue Berkey’s Star Bales will populate this field throughout the seasons. I see them as an updated version of Monet’s haystacks—and imagine them illuminated violet by a winter sunset with their star points softened with a layer of new snow. Right now, the warmer fall sunsets are coloring these sculptures a tawny gold. I may not be the only photographer in Southeast Iowa considering how to capture their unique profiles at different times of day as the subtleties of the light and seasons play over them.

Sue describes her inspiration for the Star Bale project “as an idea I had in my head for years that just never went away. So when I finished renovating the house”—a hands-on project for Sue—“I knew it was time to make the Star Bales.”

Sue grew up in Philadelphia, where her parents cultured creativity and surrounded her with art in her home, as mine did, too. Both of our mothers were painters. And oddly enough both of our fathers were what she fondly described as Renaissance men—mechanically adept in their fields; not only able to do anything, but also to do it well! Sue is quite a Renaissance woman herself.

After undergraduate work and a term at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, Sue finished her MFA at Kent State University in Ohio, in sculpture. She was a full-time artist for the next nine years. With art as her priority, she worked as a waitress and taught art and wood shop at a private school. As a self-described “wild creature,” Sue found it hard to adapt to confinement or schedules. The loss of free time “just about killed me,” she said. In showing her sculptures and films internationally, Sue gathered awards for “research and investigation in new forms of cinematography” in Venezuela, and won prizes at the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Film Festival, and the Athens, Ohio, Film Festival. She spent time as an artist-in-residence at Scattergood Friends School in West Branch, Iowa, installed a one-person outdoor sculpture show at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, and received a major commission in the city of San Francisco to produce an installation sculpture. Sue credits the Star Bales project as “a significant reconnection with my artist self. This is the first major piece I’ve done in many years,” she says, adding that “making serious art will never again be on the back burner in my life. I’m back!”

Currently, aside from her career in art, Sue is also a well-known yoga instructor, Rebirther, house remodeler, and mother to her son Luke, who is now 20 and emerging as a filmmaking talent in his own right.

When I first heard about the Star Bales project, I envisioned it in my own mind, but I wasn’t prepared for the scale in which she chose to work. I imagined stars that were perhaps the same diameter as the ends of the big round bales I had grown fond of seeing in Iowan rural fields, but I was amazed when I got up close and realized her Star Bales are the same in every dimension as the round bales a hay baler spits out.

For the urban refugees who’ve moved to our pastoral flyover state from either coast, here is a primer on the work and equipment required in baling hay, to help you appreciate the effort that Sue undertook. The most frequently used type of baler is a round baler that produces cylindrically shaped bales. The hay is simply rolled up inside the baler using a combination of rollers and belts. When the bale reaches a determined size, twine or mesh wrap binds it together. The back of the baler opens and the bale drops out. Bales range from four to six feet in diameter and up to five feet wide. Round bales can weigh a ton or more, which means they require special moving equipment.

Sue’s Star Bale construction was entirely hand constructed. First, she found Ted Tedrow, a farmer who specializes in straw bales. An amazing “can-do” guy with a great attitude, Ted liked Sue’s project. He delivered a round straw bale of timothy grass, reed canary grass, and bird’s-foot trefoil to Sue’s backyard in Fairfield. Then she began to experiment with techniques for the construction of a Star Bale. “I would lie in bed at night running through engineering possibilities in my head, which was fun for me,” Sue says. “And after a few bloopers, the final plan came into focus.”

The Star Bales are beautifully lit at sunrise. (Photo by Joe Stanski, browncow108@lisco.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Each Star Bale has 12 parts—a front and back star panel, and 10 star-point facet panels (two for each point). So if you do the math, for each of the 3 Star Bales she installed, Sue made 30 star-point facet panels and 6 big star panels. Each part is cut out of CDX plywood (made with glue that can withstand wet conditions without de-laminating) and covered with 2 to 3 inches of pressed straw, tightly tied with twine, and securely wrapped with plastic “net wrapping,” which is the same wrap you see on round bales. Then all the parts were screwed onto a wooden 2-by-4 internal frame. And yes, like round bales, these are heavy.

It took four men to just barely pick one up after Sue had built them on specially made pallets, and using a skid loader, they transported them to the field. The entire production cycle took two months altogether, with Sue learning “that slow and steady will get me where I want to go.” n

Directions: Finding the Star Bales is easy: take Highway 1 north from Fairfield and turn left on 185th Street. You’ll find the field 0.2 miles along that road as you head west. Approaching from the north on Highway 1, turn right on 185th Street, the first road after Airport Road.

Sue really wants to give a shout out to Brian Stains, Jeff Town, Tim Tedrow, Joe Stanski, Peter DeRuider, Kim Strubell, Jim Busscher, Michaela Terrien, Ian Fry, Louise and Jonathan Lynch, and Luke Stenger. And mostly importantly to her backyard neighbors for enduring the sound of an electric stapler for weeks on end, with a special thanks going to the Global Country of World Peace, which owns the field the Star Bales sit on.

Mo Ellis is an artist and writer in Fairfield, Iowa.