MORE SUNLIGHT

This time of year, this year especially, feels heavy with loss and grief. Grief and strife across the seas, here at home throughout many parts of Turtle Island, and within our own hearts. January is a long month, both in duration and in feeling. As it is my birth month, I really try my best to find the sweetness in it, but this time of year is an undeniably strong, bitter medicine. I respect how the energy of this time in the Northern Hemisphere holds strong and neutral to it’s limited resources, which we may experience as austerity that is severe and unfeeling. Nature gives to encourage growth and expansion, and in flow it also limits in order to encourage rest and restoration.

Capitalism doesn’t encourage rest. The earth does. This is still very much the time for deep rest and retreat, walking in quiet abundance with the previous harvest, we need this time to reserve, reflect, and slow down. Every year for me, something about this ancient earth wisdom feels like a force to habitually resist in one way or another. Something about the forced rest feels impossible to bear, and yet with time it is borne. The potent complex beauty of the seeds we have saved from harvest begin to glow, hum, and buzz in our hands. The sun’s light continues to increase daily.

We just experienced a rough bit of enduring snow and ice conditions here in the Portland area, many trees had their roots loosened by these extreme weather conditions, ending their time above ground, sometimes slicing through homes on their way down. Animals and humans alike are displaced by these types of tree fell events.

On December 27, a few weeks before the storm, I lost a dear tree friend, the Northern Catalpa tree that you may have seen me write about previously here or on my Instagram page. I woke up in the morning to a person in a bright orange sweatshirt shimmying up the main trunk of the tree. I hoped at first that he was assessing some branches to trim for maintenance, but when I looked outside and saw how large the tree crew was, I knew that I was experiencing my last morning with this arboreal elder. I still grieve the loss of this tree. I mourn the loss of the shade and groundedness they offered me throughout a deep period of mourning in 2023, as I also mourn the loss of shelter for the squirrels, birds, and other families of wildlife imperceptible to my eye.

I worked a full day that day at Clary Sage, so I could not watch the entire take down occur, but I was able to salvage a large branch from one of the site workers for my porch garden before I left the house. When I returned home at the end of the evening, there was a large log from a trunk of the tree resting along the sidewalk near where it used to grow. The moon had just been full in Cancer the day previous, and I had done an extensive reading for myself for the year ahead. The roots and branches of that tree had held and supported the wisdom offered to me in this reading. That night, after the tree’s light had been extinguished and I had returned home from work, there was an empty space in the night sky where their branches once sprawled. I sat on their remaining trunk, and gazed at the waning full moon, clouds quickly rolling by in front of her. The opening in the sky is still bittersweet. I have more sunlight in my home now, which my houseplants are enjoying, but I no longer have one of my elders around.

The earth and the cosmos, of which we are a part, can hold our grief. This is a time to hold grief with one another. A time to mourn the retreat of many nourishing ecosystems. And a time to imagine ways to build new, flourishing ecosystems of care for one another, human and non-human alike.

In a numerological sense, 2024 (2+0+2+4) is a Strength (8) year in the Tarot. This is a year for courage. Cor (Latin) meaning “heart” —> corage (French) —> courage (Middle English). Typically, this card depicts a lion, and a femme figure with one hand reaching tenderly into the lion’s open mouth. I won’t offer a deep dive into all the wisdom of this card today. For now, I think it is worth delivering one clear reminder that this card impresses: you cannot suppress your wild animal self in perpetuity, neither can you deny yourself grace and tenderness.

Have heart. Nurture heart-focused healing modalities. Access heart-centered bravery. Operate from loving integrity. Learn new ways to offer yourself love, care, and gentle kindness. Roar. Move with wild vigor in your home, or on the land, to music that encourages your feral spirit to sing with raucous abandon. Get curious about ways to integrate the wild and the tender. The effect of doing this work diligently will help you infuse these qualities in your external relationships as well. Love with a fierce, courageous, and tender heart. We need your courage.

January 23, 2024

Artemis Divine

POWER, BEAR & ARTEMIS

I returned home two weeks ago from my road trip to the Dakotas, and I’m still reeling from my time amid the heart of the prairies…

Read More

Some Thoughts on Pleasure, the Erotic & Earthlings

Some Thoughts on Pleasure, the Erotic & Earthlings

Stripping and sex work have taught me so much about the pleasure realm. For a long time, I held an untenable tension: an embodied appreciation for the pleasure principles as healing service within the sex work spectrum, while also holding tight to pieces of personal shame around my own sexuality, pleasure, desire, and eroticism. It has taken a long time to learn how to better discern which stories are mine, and which stories were never mine to hold in the first place. This is an ongoing process.

I know this experience of shame is not entirely unique to me. It has been culturally and ancestrally embedded in many of us to hold tight to expressions of shame. But shame prevents many of us from connecting with one another more deeply. It also hinders personal growth and understanding. If you are reading this essay, you are aware that your own shame has been, or is, holding you back from progressing in your own human experience.  You are not alone. It is up to each of us to discover our own why for holding so tightly to shame. We are here to help one another get free from these cycles. This is part of my own story of liberation through pleasure, the erotic, and an expanded definition of what it means to be a human in relationship to non human entities, earthlings in relationship to one another.

I’ve experienced a rich cascade of shift over the past ten years, and the past six+ months especially. I watched my father’s consciousness slowly deteriorate from vascular dementia over a painful ten year period as well as processing his death in late 2022, subsequently changing my name, accepting my non-binary gender, and working consistently with entheogenic medicine to help me break free of the binary tension of sensuous embodiment versus shame. If the binary no longer served my personal experience of gender or pleasure, then perhaps it no longer served any part of my life. Once I realized the walls were all a fabricated construct, the possibilities became vastly permeable.

Simultaneously, I knew I had to learn new ways to overcome the seasonal heartbreak, an archetypal journey as psychopomp through the underworld of an especially gloomy Winter. I know a lot of Portlanders wondered right alongside me if the somber cast of this past Winter would ever finally lift? Spring took a painfully long while to truly arrive here this year. Once the long awaited and soft warmth of the sun finally reappeared, I realized that I was done identifying with the dying paradigm, at least for this cycle. I knew I wanted to really live again, and that I did in fact feel very alive. Vital, and buzzing with purpose and will. The corporeal proof outside my northern windows: bright green leaves bursting forth at last from the meandering branches of a big, old guardian catalpa tree. I had been praying for this scene since late February, and had almost lost hope that they’d ever re-appear. It was time to emerge from the cyclical tunnel of judgement, shame, and limitations - hallmark characters in an underworld journey - to love and accept myself as complex, healing, and abundantly resourced.

There is still a lot to untangle within all of this, so these topics are going to take awhile to unfurl and bloom in a more deeply embodied sense. This carefully considered investigation is a slow homecoming into a more sovereign and authentic devotion to pleasure in all forms, in all realms. It is the season to study, observe, act, enjoy, and simply be. 

It is here, in the realms of vitality and enjoyment of the sensuous life, that I would like to establish a connective thread back to the topic of pleasure and the erotic within the world of sex work.

Studying and learning from the careers, writing, research, and scholarship of other sex workers, i.e. Jo Weldon, Annie Sprinkle, Viva Las Vegas, Elle Stanger, and Susan Shepherd has enriched my appreciation for the vast spectrum and history of the craft. Of all these personalities, Annie Sprinkle appeared to me first, while I was a confused, young art school kid in my undergraduate studies at Small Town Cow College USA (a.k.a. Oregon State University). Annie’s practice was the first bright spark to speak to the sensuous, pleasure-besotted sense of self that was wrestling within me to get free - the parts that desperately wanted to get truly weird, flirty, luxuriously languid, playfully ridiculous, wild, and commanding with what sex and allure could look and feel like for me. Concepts I could intellectually grasp, but that took many years to marinate within my body, consciousness, and heart. If you’d like to learn more about Annie’s practice, begin with her A Public Cervix Announcement performance series, and go from there. Her work is generous, sweet, and transgressive.

Another key moment of realization during my undergraduate studies: I had no idea that I could flirt, but a beloved theater director at OSU, Marion O. Rossi, who had cast me in a Summer Shakespeare review for our goofy theater department knew this about me. I had received a role with very few lines, Audrey, the goat herdess, and I really had no clue why I had been cast in this role. When I asked Marion, he said, “No one can flirt like Tyler”, (my given name, and the name I still used at the time). I truly had had no idea of this up to that point, but when he said that to me, it was a big “Aha” moment, and so many interactions throughout my young adult life suddenly made so much more sense…I just thought I was being playful with people. But, um, news flash for younger me, that’s part of what flirting actually looks like. After that, I decided to dive into the role of Audrey with abandon. Did I intentionally steal some scenes to get a laugh? Yes. Do I regret it? Not really. Insert evil laughter here…

As a result, my general approach to this day when I am onstage, is to flirt with the audience by playing with them, being interested in their response, and proceed from there. Flirting in this way is collaborative. I allow play to become an erotic and humorous encounter with the body, a collaboration with the music and the sphere of energy the audience offers. I have also learned a lot about stage humor from watching my coworker, Maggie Magnolia, at Mary’s Club. She has a gorgeous, trained dancer form with hilarious body humor skills and a keen sense of comedic that timing are exceptional, and it’s an honor to witness her perform. 

And yet, skills, beauty, and talent alone are not enough to serve some moments. What I mean to say is, not every iteration of audience at the club is a collective and harmonious gem, so sometimes it’s a matter of conjuring alchemical lemonade from a bag of salty, sour lemons. Improvisation and ad libbing skills are paramount to success as a naked, sacred stage clown: Yes, and.

There are magical, *poof*-you-blink-and-they’re-gone moments when a stage performance creates a palpable shift; the frequency in the energy field is raised, and I hold a delicate and ephemeral pleasure before me in gratitude and presence. Some nights, the whole crew and I are in flow, and we make magic with one another, gracefully accepting the flux of clientele. Perhaps for just a few brief hours we can conjure what may have felt nearly unimaginable at the start of an especially dim evening. We are indomitable gamblers, betting with hope, optimism, pattern recognition, intuition, luck, timing, allure, humor, and practiced precision. These are the moments I live for in this work. I believe in this work. But I know a shift is headed my way, because this work is also just work some days. Soon enough, it will be time to transition these skills to other platforms; time to prioritize the other creative irons I am also tending to at the pleasure temple.

Pleasure and eroticism also exist for me within the realm of plant stewardship, communion, and medicine making. Every aspect of the sensuous encounter with a beloved plant or mushroom is an experience of the erotic - awakening, toning, and nurturing my pleasure receptors. My spirit is enlivened by the act of placing my bare feet on the earth, or plunging my nails and fingers into the soil. The sun warming my body, the breeze carrying passing flower petals and caressing my cheek, the juicy wriggle of earthworms that soften the soil into humus…I am in pure pleasure realm here. I am in co-creative flow with my fellow earthling friends. 

My divinatory practice feels related to this conversation, but exists in a realm that at present defies more nuanced description, so I will continue the thread established here between plants, ecology, and the erotic. 

While I was introduced to Annie Sprinkle’s body of work as an undergraduate student, it wasn’t until about 10 years later that I finally got to meet Annie Sprinkle, very briefly, at Portland’s Hollywood Theater. I was in the initiatory first couple of months into my stripping career, and I was a sponge, ready to soak up whatever sex work wisdom I could. Especially if it merged with the art world in ways that felt authentic and sang to my spirit of challenging growth as an erotic being. Annie’s work definitely did this for me.

Sprinkle was presenting to us a retrospective of her career within the intersections of sex work, performance art, queer activism, and ecology. She was especially enthralled, in that particular time period, with her identity as an ecosexual - an individual who is open to sexual, sensuous, and erotic encounters with ecological systems and organic organisms within ecosystems - my definition, not necessarily the definition that you will find if you google the term ecosexual, or search the Ecosex Manifesto definition. If you are curious to learn more, please go check out the book she wrote with her partner and collaborator, Beth Stephens, Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover, which was published in 2019, seven years after I attended this lecture at Hollwood Theater

At this lecture, I recall regarding an image of her naked body, pale and creamy, punctuated amid a dark, open redwood forest floor, hips thrust and arms outstretched against a fresh mound of soil with earnest and lustful joy. She looked so sweetly at peace, like a baby suckling their mother’s breast for nourishment, combined with the look of someone who is grasping into their lover’s flesh with passionate and urgent abandon. This was an enlightening and enlivening image to experience. My jaw dropped and I giggled with glee. 

I had always loved plants, and was learning to love my body the more that I allowed it to be witnessed and regarded by strangers and regulars at the club. It would take a decade more for me to connect these dots for myself. I was still learning how to be comfortable in my body, and offer it gratitude and prideful care. 

Oddly enough, during this time period, my first months as a baby stripper at Magic Gardens, was the first time I realized that while many lovers had appreciated my body, I had never been present or embodied enough to fully reciprocate this regard with myself. For example, I had never appreciated the way my breasts looked…I had always known that they felt great (long before anyone else was permitted to experience them!)…but it wasn’t until I was witnessed enjoying them with my own hands for an audience, eyes full of passive desire and longing, that I could regard myself in the mirror of the Magic stage (Viva writes extensively about this club if you are curious to learn more) and exclaimed, “Oh, I get it now! I have great tits! Is it silly that I didn’t know that ever?” 

I’m not going to purport that this experience held me permanently in physical self acceptance, it’s more that it helped me better see myself outside of myself. For at least fifteen minutes at a time, I can embody the confidence of the goddess. I serve at her temple, modeling radical self acceptance and love for my body.

I studied ballet throughout grade school and modern dance in my undergraduate studies. Through a study of modern dance I learned the luscious freedom of connecting with the floor and my center of gravity. It was this knowledge that proved most successful for the slow and languid manic pixie dream girl vibe that Magic Gardens ascribed. Playing “Wandering Star” by Portishead in that dark, dive-y Chinatown womb room of a space…*chef’s kiss*. Magic Gardens closed it’s doors at the end of 2015. Viva Las Vegas writes extensively about this club in her book The Gospel if you are curious to learn more.

And now to return to my thread with Annie Sprinkle and ecosexuality. Annie Sprinkle. The body. Performance. Delight. Pleasure. The erotic. The great erotic encounter with Mother Earth: our first mother, our first lover. We are expressions of the earth in human animal form. Annie’s work has appeared and reappeared in my creative awareness on and off for over 20 years now. For me, she is also like a mother, nurturing freedom from sexual shame. I love that her work exists in the world. It enriches my reality.

Around the same time that I met Annie Sprinkle, I lived in North Portland and was invited to be part of these small, 15-20 person performance nights at the home of an artist couple I knew who lived down the street. I would compose these small 1 or 2 song solo dance numbers with tracks by Edith Piaf, Le Tigre, and so on. I danced in my tights, panties, and a top - gliding, rolling, bending, and crawling across the floor, blending my love for modern dance with slowww sensuality and deadpan humor. One of the hosts, Christopher, commented to me after one of these performances that the way I danced reminded him “that we are all animals.” I loved that. Again, I was being seen in a way that I had not had words for at the time. A piece of my creative purpose and expression was being perceived and reflected back to me.

Some things I know: We are all animals, and I wish to experience pleasure via the realms of erotic expression through movement and energetic exchange on stage, as well as through delightful conversation and kinship with the root and soil bound earthlings of this planet. I believed when I started stripping, and still hold the belief, that everyone deserves access to consensual expressions of pleasure. Pleasure is one of my currencies for connection.       

There is so much more to be shared within these intersecting topics, and I do plan to write more…but it is time to let these stories marinate for a spell.                                                                                                                                 

Artemis Divine 

May 3 and 31, 2023

Portland, OR

Joy

I think and talk a lot about pleasure, but a word that has been emerging more insistently as of late in my personal healing practice is joy. I’m inviting joy to be the candle I light first in my heart these days. Joy is teaching me that once pain has taught us all it can in the grief process, that joy can take on the healing mantle to tend to our grief. Joy can lighten the load. Joy can be a gentle, tender, and loving guide.

Maybe this will seem out of nowhere to some, but one place where I observe joy is in the symbiotic connection. The type of relationship where both entities agree, by biological or relational imperative, that all they need in order to connect is the essential gift they offer simply by existing in space alongside one another in reciprocal flow. For example, I am practicing when I take a walk in the woods, affirming that all I need from the plant earthlings is their oxygen, and all they need from me is my CO2. Yes, there are actually many other things we need from one another, but when I start with this essential symbiotic orientation I can breathe in that space with more relaxed joy and ease. And, yes, there is also something intangible that exists between us: an acknowledgement between earthlings of the power source we are connected to between, and among, the many universal realms.

Joy exists in that quality of present awareness.

When I recognize the harmony that simple presence and acceptance offers, I am in a joyful state of flow and allowance for all spirit to exist just as it is. I joyfully love and accept my connection to spirit exactly as it is, now.

But it can be so very challenging to learn how to arrive, again and again, in a state of flow. The work to find ease within oneself requires exceptional bravery and trust, everyday I still catch myself falling back into old behavioral programming. Instead of shaming myself for this habitual tendency, I observe it. Observation brings me back into the present moment, and there is joy there. Joy in the awareness. Joy in the distance between myself and a habit. An old habit.

It has been helpful to learn how to transmute habit into transformational ritual, to invite the sacredness of ritual and connection with spirit to intercede on my behalf. I would like to say more about ritual, but first I want to say a few more things on the sacred. There is a symbiotic connection that exists between the corporeal realm of our human and earthly existence, and that of the sacred.

The sacred is not some clean and pure state of perpetual nirvana. The sacred is being in the present moment. The sacred is awareness of all that is tangible, as well as awareness of all that exists just beyond words and pictures. The sacred exists in the ephemeral and transitory nature of all we experience and encounter. The sacred speaks through us, so that we may sing songs of meaning, purpose, and connection to one another.

The sacred exists for me when I can sit with a vibrant, tall stand of wild nettles, listening for their song. It exists as well in a clean rack of dishes. The glow of a candle flame. Watching plants grow slowly and steadily as Spring progresses here in the Northern Hemisphere, and grieving the rapid shifts in weather that climate crisis carries across the planet. Witnessing myself age. Training my muscles to slowly recover strength after a long period of rest and emotional recovery. The sacred also exists for me in my time on stage performing; I create a container of joy, pleasure, delight, and desire for myself, and a container on stage for the audience to witness me.

Gratitude is sacred. Anger is sacred. Love is sacred. Mystery and fear are sacred. Connection is sacred. Joy is sacred.

To cultivate joy in the sacred of the everyday, engage in ritual. Begin with a ritual that can easily be repeated regularly, in a space where you feel spacious connection with the sacred: drinking a special cup of tea, playing music or singing, dancing along to your favorite song, soaking in a warm salt bath, breathing with intention, reading, journaling, taking a walk or a skip with the land, and so on. Show up there regularly, with devotion, and gratitude. Spirit and the sacred honor regular commitments made by the devoted. The reward I experience is an embodied, relieving realization that this world needs very little from me.

I believe that we are crafted in divinity just as we are. Much of the energy that we have been trained to believe, within a capitalist mindset, wherein we need to expend and produce in perfunctory, exponential growth for the digestible consumption of others is actually meant to be expansive matter just for us: our own private window into the joy of the sacred that is our very essence. There is very little I may actually need from someone else, but there is much I wish to share with those who are able and willing to honor devotion to, and acceptance of, the sacred.