Cultural Creatives on Creativity

Hi Michelle. Welcome to the Cultural Creatives blog. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

I am an Alternative Religion writer for the Examiner. I  am a 41 year old woman who discovered in my early 20′s that all my beliefs about life/death and all things in-between fit the description of Pagan in a book by Starhawk called the Spiral Dance. This book had such an impact on me, I named my second horse, who was 4 months old and not yet named, Spiral Dancer (she’s 15 now).

I was the last child in a family of three kids, and the only girl. I lost my first brother when I was 11 to suicide, and it forever changed my view about age. I couldn’t figure out why he would kill himself when he could do anything he wanted, he was after all a big boy of 17. Sigh. When I turned 17 I went “Oh shit…he was just a baby.” Age has never been an issue for me.

But, hormones and stress from working jobs you don’t love were issues for me. My journey started days after my second brother died 2 years ago from MS, and I’m convinced he has had a small hand in pushing me into self confidence. I don’t have any self produced business at this point, but hope to within the next year. I plan on becoming certified to teach the Goddess Workout, which is simply learning to Belly Dance through conscious use of your muscles that create the moves, and doing so with passion and love for the Inner Goddess all women possess. I believe our soul is a spark of Divinity, that part of us that never dies, but continues to learn, grow and return to our Source. Our intuition, our passions, these are our Inner Goddess’ communicating with us, and when we listen we surely find our path!

I have many passions, so many that I sometimes become overwhelmed that I may not be able to accomplish them all! So, I’ve begun to focus on the ones that come easily: horses, Belly Dance, Drawing/Painting (I actually did tattooing for awhile, but hated the atmosphere in other people’s shops), Tarot, writing, singing (definitely more fun for me than Doug, my partner), and taking the first steps that will eventually lead me to the ability to play a set of Highland Bagpipes!

Please share three interesting/crazy things about yourself.
I paid $1,200 for a horse I could not ‘do’ anything with. He was so scared, it took 6 people three hours to load him into the trailer to bring him home. He would walk up to me if I stayed still and offered treats, but he was very clear petting and touching would be tolerated at his leisure. Another horse snorting would send him running, and he certainly wanted nothing to do with his halter.

Why did I buy him? Because I was in love, one look into his liquid brown eyes and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed him to be sold off to the “Buckers”…whether it was my thought or his, when I found out this was to be his next move if the trainer he was going to couldn’t help turn him around. I KNEW in my heart, it would break his heart, his is a gentle soul and I think he knew I would give him what he wanted and needed most: a loving, patient, and understanding owner. Riding a horse is a lot like the saying about life: it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. Horses offer us so much more than a ride, and allowing him to set the pace of his ‘training’ has allowed him to trust me. I could push him a little more…but I’m curious to see how long before he begins to WANT more challenges and interaction.

When I was 18, I got my first tattoo: Brian Setzer on my left forearm. I hid it from my parents for over a week, knowing they’d be telling me I’d regret it because I couldn’t hide it. I knew the time was right to tell them one late afternoon. They were having some wine, enjoying leisurely preparations for a get-together later at our home. They were in good moods, and I knew they couldn’t dwell on it if they were angry, because they had people coming over.

I actually sat them down, telling them I had something to tell them. I really thought they’d loose their minds…even if Dad had one, back in 1985/86 tattoo’s weren’t the taboo they’d been 20 years earlier, but they were not quite as prevalent as they are today. When I explained that me and Christine had done something in Frisco that I didn’t think they’d approve of, but that I wanted them to know I’d really thought it out and had planned for over a year before doing it…they became anxious. “What did you DO!?”. I was NOT prepared for my mothers’ first guess when I asked them to try and guess. “You were arrested for prostitution!”. My dad guessed right first try, then they wanted to see, and to my surprise, not only were they not angry at me, they showed it off to all their friends all night.

In all my 41 years of life, I’ve spent less than a year of that in a cat-less state of being. Cats, horses and books are the three main themes you will see when you look at family albums and me growing up. When I was in my early/mid 20′s, I adopted a stray cat, who was a Marmalade Tabby with extra toes on her front feet. I named her 7 toes, and while I felt bad for her, she showed up at my work begging for food in the parking lot every day-I didn’t want to ‘steal’ her if she already had a home. So, I spoke out loud to her and explained my dilemma, asking her that if she wanted to live with me, she would have to follow me on her own 4 legs to the car, I would not carry her. She did, talking in her sweet meow the whole way. Upon entering the car, she promptly jumped out the open passenger window and I thought “Well, that’s that.” But, she jumped in again on my lap, and drove the whole way home there, with her front paws on the wheel.

I had her almost 15 years and she was there for me through a whole lot of bad boyfriends, and she was here when I found Doug. She loved him, and while I held her those last hours of her life, I knew she wanted Doug to see her to the other side…and he cried when she died in his arms. I told her to please come back as a Manx kitty with extra toes…and within a week of losing my Boxer “Brenden”, I found an ad for a woman that breed Manx Mitten kittens. I have a sneaking suspision she has returned, we brought two brothers home, Bob and Tanka…who have eased the pain of loosing Toes girl.

What’s the most courageous thing you’ve done?

I packed up 2 horses (paid to have them transported, but you know), 2 cats, a Boxer puppy, myself, everything I owned and drove from Hollister, California to Denver, Colorado knowing one person here. I left everything I knew for not only the Unknown, but the COMPLETELY unknown. I am not a city girl…I love open space, wild flowers and horses and cattle grazing in green pastures under open skies. Hollister had grown too much for my taste, and I certainly couldn’t afford to live in Santa Cruz, much less ever hope to own land. I needed a major change, and something told me I would find “HIM” here…him turned out to be Doug.

It was a rocky start, with 3 residential changes and at least that many job changes before things began to settle down after I met Doug. When I came over the crest of I-70 around midnight that fateful night, I almost turned around. I grew up watching John Denver and Olivia Newton-John specials in Colorado…when I saw the lights of the whole Denver area, I thought “Oh shit, I moved to San Jose!!!!!”. It took more courage than I knew I had to keep my foot on the gas and NOT turn around!

What are five of your favorite books, movies, songs, groups, websites….

Here goes…

Books: Spiral Dance, Heart of the Fire, Predestined Love, Mists of Avalon, Winged Pharoah

Movies: Black Stallion, Braveheart, Thunderheart, Sid & Nancy, Dead Again

Songs: Hmmmm….I’m terrible with song names…so see next line

Groups: Stray Cats, Gene Vincent, Offspring, Wendy Rule, Bob Marley, the Smiths, Alicia Keys, Patsy Cline, Primus, Cramps, Misfits, Echo & the Bunnymen, Lorenna McKinnett, Pantera, AC/DC, Eagles, ….oh wait, that’s more than 5! LOL…there are so many, I love all kinds of music, bagpipes, harp, cello, fiddle-Celtic music and Egyptian music.

Websites: for obvious reasons, the Examiner website is one of my current favs! (I write for them).

Dolphina’s website  (my belly dance hero) and here’s a couple that Doug has found that are a total kick in the pants: something awful (everything that’s bad, strange and just plain unimaginable on the internet…last week they had a link to a site that pays women to act out a damsel in distress on film for a select group of fettish folks…it was disturbingly funny) and “engrish”…a website dedicated to bad Japanese translations, from signs to ads and everything in between.
Things I avoid: not too big on the blood-n-guts movies, or hard-core rap (I like Desiny’s Child and I actually own a Jay-Z cd…but that’s about it).

To be continued…