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I recently turned 30, and I wanted the celebration to be a reflection of my life, as I saw it in the beginning as a small child, how it has evolved through the years, and how I am now stepping forward with all of this experience into my future.
For several years, I have worked with a shamanic practitioner and intuitive healer named Joe Monkman. I first met Joe after years of trying mainstream and alternative solutions to the discomforts I was left with physically and emotionally after a car accident. It is hard to explain, but Joe somehow allows me the capacity to look deep within myself and make large perspective shifts within myself - things I've seen people take years to do in therapy, sometimes in one single session! Joe has all kinds of training in various healing modalities, including shamanic traditions from Peru. When I first met Joe, he invited me to a ceremony he did for his 40th birthday, and that's where I got the idea. He is a natural leader, and hilarious, warm, and embracing, so I thought, "Who better to lead my birthday ceremony?"
My friend Jordan Rosenberg (screenwriter) in LA, caught wind of this, and said, "Are you marrying yourself, or something?" I said, "Something like that." He said, "You're having a SARAHmony!"
And the name stuck.
I had called Joe six or seven months before my birthday to ask him if he'd be willing to help me. He was, of course. Part of the preparation I did was to face my stagefright. I took a public speaking class this summer and everything! At the time when I first called Joe, I couldn't imagine myself get up in front of a room full of people (albeit people I love) and speaking.
But I did it. First my yoga teacher, Leigh Evans, led us all in a beautiful chant. Then I gave gifts (ceramics I made) to my parents, acknowledging them for their role in the beginning of my life's journey. Joe spoke a little bit, and I walked through a mandala I made on the floor (out of glass pebbles - a circle, divided into quadrants), representing the first three decades of my life, and stepping into the next. It was kind of a whirlwind for me! I was full of excitement, and tried to speak clearly, and tell the stories of my youth, my teens, and my twenties in ways that people would find amusing, and still convey the significance of that time period on my perception of the world. (People laughed and cried in all of the appropriate places, so it seemed to work!)
As, I stepped into the forth quadrant, I declared my wishes for the future: the production of my new book through a lucrative book deal, to inspire millions of people all over the world, and to be open to giving and receiving more love.
There is tremendous power in having made those declarations. I now have a mission, to live up to my own dreams, and a community of witnesses to uphold me to that.
And, I am sharing it here, to extend that community even further.
I would like to thank Joe for his amazing role in all of this - particularly for guiding me in terms of how to create the ceremony, and the importance of stating my wishes for the future. Joe has a very cool website (featuring photos by me!) all about the way he inspires people to live their "Rich Vision," at www.earthspiritworks.com.
And I am now using the glass from the Sarah-mony as part of glazing experiments on my ceramics projects. You can put glass in the bottom of your piece and it will melt and do all kinds of interesting things in the kiln (examples to come soon!). I love that the energy from that special moment in my life will now be imbued into more creations, and so shared with the world in different ways.
I am very excited to have successfully thrown a couple of pots on the potter's wheel. This was not an easy feat for me!
The first step in the process is called "centering," during which you shape the clay into a cone, and then flatten it, and cone it and flatten it again, until it spins in the center of the wheel without showing any signs of wobble.
The trick is bracing your elbows against your body so that your hands put even pressure on the clay. You make yourself as solid as possible so that the clay moves in the way you are directing it - rather than having a wobbly mound of clay make you move and wobble, too! (I was pretty wobbly, at first, until the brilliant head of the Ceramic studio, Nadiege, came over and helped me adjust myself. Thanks, Nadiege!!! You're the best.)
This shot was taken in the beautiful backyard garden work-space at Choplet in Williamsburg. Those are my two wheel-spun pieces, sitting on bats, starting to dry. (Next step: shaping and trimming. Then: firing and glazing!)
Briefly, I wanted to show off some of the amazing talent of my friend and client, Christina, whose wedding I photographed this year. Christina and I were introduced through a mutual friend, and then discovered that we both take classes at the same ceramic studio - Choplet.
Christina hand-made all of her own centerpieces for her wedding in ceramics. I was completely blown away by the concept of a "modern farm," that she managed to make both elegant and adorable. At the end of the night, she insisted that her guests take the pieces home to enjoy. She insisted I take one, as well! I was deeply honored by this gesture, and I 
have Christina's bowl with the little sheep inside on a special table in my living room.
Plus, I was also lucky enough to get to photograph all of the pieces while I was at the wedding!
The technique she used to make these pieces is called hand-building. (This is as opposed to throwing pots on the wheel.) The bowls are essentially glorified pinch pots - they were literally pinched into shape. And the animals were (most likely, although I didn't ask!) rolled out with a slab-roller and then cut out, kind of in the same way that you roll out cookie dough and cut out cookies.
I am amazed at Christina's meticulous care and attention to detail. She puts so much love into her ceramics work, and it really inspires me. Sometimes when I am having a hard time concentrating on my own projects, I think of her work - it appears so focused and effortless at the same time.
And her work is a reflection of her person - beautiful, gentle, distinct, elegant, and nuanced. I am so appreciative of getting to work with and befriend Christina. Thanks, C, for everything!!!
Recently, I went to the MoMA with my friend Arthur (a brilliant attorney from Cleveland), and had the chance to check out the films and paintings of Salvador Dali on exhibition there. Dali is an intriguing artist because of his commitment to the dream state - his work is uncensored in sexuality, in a certain grotesque-ness, and, frankly, by the norms of waking-state logic.
"Surrealist," is the term that defines his work, and of which his work is the most famous example. His paintings are often bright and colorful, or with bright and colorful elements against a darker backdrop, and three-dimensional space is delineated absurdly distinctly - almost like a cartoon. As a filmmaker, he created pieces with a very strange mood - and wherein the sequence of events was much more akin to the logic of a dream than of any narrative, plot-based film that would qualify as mainstream entertainment.
One of the films depicts a man trying to seduce an unwilling woman, and cuts abruptly from that seduction to a shot of the man dragging a piano across the room, and then to a shot of animal carcasses. (Carcasses and ants are two favored Dali symbols.) On the surface, this just sounds frivolous, or even sensationalist. But nothing about the film suggests that it is trying to get a rise out of the audience - rather, it seems to imply that there is normalcy in even the strangest things, and that human behavior and thinking in its most normal sense is, in fact, absurd. It seems to me that the great discomfort in watching parts of Dali's film comes not from the fact that they are unpleasant, but that it makes one realize that people are not perfect and that one's own thoughts have at times wandered into the sublime and grotesque. In other words, Dali's work invites the viewer to see in oneself what one finds repulsive.
Dali also created giant paintings to serve as backdrops in collaboration with the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock for his classic film, Spellbound. Painting and film were obviously very intertwined for Dali, and I relate to that a lot as a photographer trained in the medium of moving images. You can explore certain relations between shapes and symbols in a 2-dimensional picture, and then it's something else entirely to take the picture of that moment, and explore it in the continuum of time and space. Both of them were interesting to him, and to me, for the different ways they allow a thought to be explored - singularly as a moment, and as an inseparable part of a greater, broader context.
My favorite part of the exhibit, by far, was a lost collaboration between Dali and Walt Disney, circa 1946. "Destino," was to be a feature animated film, made by animating Dali's images - including several of his most famous paintings. For reasons that aren't totally clear, the project was abandoned, but several minutes of completed footage exists, and it was edited into a short film. It is a strange lyrical story without words, that shows a woman and a man who shapeshift and look for each other in their various forms as they move through a very dream-like world. The combination of Dali images with Disney animation came out, in my opinion, bearing remarkable resemblence to the Japanese animae cartoons I was first introduced to by my brother in the early 1990s. "Destino," looked to me to be way ahead of its time.
Seeing Dali's work in all of its forms, made me see the value of a true vision, and the way one's aesthetic inevitably permeates whatever medium it is one works through. It inspired me to trust my dreams, as odd and dark as they may seem, and to understand that true brilliance doesn't always need to appear logical on the surface. In fact, sometimes connecting the "wrong" dots is exactly what leads to seeing a newer, more interesting picture.
One more trip to the beach...
Something about the end of August that makes it feel important to get to the seashore, at 
least one more time before the fall begins. These are some shots I took along the Jersey Shore in a town called Ocean Grove. It is historically a very Christian settlement, and along the 
Great Hall where many Christians still gather for services, there are rows of little tent houses, where people relax for the summer near the sea. Most of the town is full of beautiful Victorian-style houses, and many of them are now bed and breakfasts.
Ocean Grove also has an amazing boardwalk - it was awesome to walk along it at night and gaze at the moon, and the lights from other towns along the shore. To the north, there is another little town called Asbury Park, where there are remnants of an old casino building, and a carousel turned theatre house.However, the real reason for this trip was that this August, I really, really, really wanted to swim in the ocean.
It felt wonderful to get up (after lying all afternoon under the blazing sun), step in, and fee
l the cool, strong ocean waves splashing over my body. The sea is immensely soothing place. I felt so refreshed from swimming in the ocean, and utterly peaceful as my body sensed the ease of the balance of the elements - the fiery heat of the sun, the fresh, moving air, the firmness of the sandy earth beneath me, and the fluid, shifting, refreshing water. Centered-ness seems the natural byproduct of connecting with all of the elements in this way. So, perhaps it is more than laziness and ease that we're seeking when we head to the seashore! Maybe we feel pulled to it for balance.
This summer, I rented a car several times for various excursions, for business and pleasure. I visited the Berkshires twice, went all the way to northern Ohio, and drove across Long Island to Shelter Island. Each time I drove somewhere, I would 
inevitably come upon a garden center or farm selling flowering plants, and I would stop and select a new plant friend to take home.
In the Berkshires, there was this huge, amazing garden center and greenhouse. I got two different little flowery plants there - each with different size buds in different shades of purple. In Ohio, I stopped at a local garden store close to my parents house and found a huge petunia plant, in yet another shade of purple. Driving back from Shelter Island, I found this amazing farm where they sold all kinds of organic produce, and there I bought a pot of sunflowers, ready to bloom.
Over the summer, I added all of these friends to my fire escape, where I had decided to keep a few other plants I had accumulated in Brooklyn. It began to look like a 
country summer's day outside my city window! They say that living things vibrate at a different rate from non-living, and that, on some level, we are able to consciously perceive this. I will say, that whenever I look out at all of the beautiful flowers and leaves reaching towards the sky from outside my window, I am brightened, energized. There is perfection in nature. And it's perfectly effortless.
It's this perfect, natural, effortless energy that I get to see each time I pass by my living room window - and I have found it incredibly inspiring! It makes me more attune to the weather (when it rains, the plants don't need as much water, and on hot days, they need extra), and has me thinking about the change of seasons (most of the plants only last one year!). In just a glance, I am reminded of nature's cycles, long and short, and how we are always growing and changing - in different ways, at different paces - constantly, and without effort. (Or sometimes WITH effort - but my plants remind me that it isn't necessary to strain.)
I love my little fire escape garden.
In getting into the spirit of a new season of ceramics classes, I decided to experiment with some Italian air-dry red clay. I started playing around with a chunk of it (it's more rubbery than the white ceramic clay we use at the Choplet ceramics studio), and the next thing I knew I was working on this little hollowed out tree stump.
I like the idea of a hollow tree stump, its carcass an open shell to contain new life or just air, or in my case, perhaps become a pencil holder. In other words, the little form that took shape in my hands made me think of real tree stumps, having passed through a life so full and rich
that it grew wide and strong... and then passed into the phase we call "death," rotted away on the inside, and eventually dried out. The whole process providing life cycles to countless organisms, I find it fascinating to think of the decades involved in the process of the creation of a real hollowed out tree stump, which in turn, provides the perfect little hiding place for a raccoon to peek out from, or for a child to come upon, and imagine fairies and nymphs throwing soirees.
My little tree stump took several days to dry out on my windowsill. It was fun getting a practice run at ceramics again before starting a new class - this fall, I'm learning to throw on the potter's wheel!
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