What love should look like

I haven't told too many people, but there is a new boy rocking my world. He has re-educated me on the subject of love and its manifestations.

Sue was the first person to bring my awareness to what love looks like and how it is transmitted through the gaze. Before speaking with her, the information I'd collected from people's eyes had remained mostly unconscious. She explained that I would see love in people's eyes if I were open to it, adding that I could make incredible progress if I actually saw what was really in a look. I left our conversation thinking to myself, "Maybe I've never seen it. Or maybe I'm so used to love, I can imagine it where it isn't."

As it turned out, I did know where love wasn't, and I immediately stopped trying to convince a certain dude to commit to me. It was only after doing this that I realized I didn't even find him remotely attractive or charming. For once, I saw what was; the gaze was selfish and otherwise empty. I wasn't impressed, and the distance was easy to maintain.

So onto the new. We officially met a few weeks ago. He's been my neighbor for years, but we hadn't noticed each other until I commented on his adorable knitted hat. He didn't respond, just rode off on his bike. I hissed at myself, "Great. Scared another one."

To my surprise, he found me working in the garden the next day and started up a conversation. We discussed bicycles, music, and horticulture. He asked if I was a woman or a teenager.

"What do you think?" I answered, testing him.

"A teenager."

We were fast friends. He made plans to plant Russian Mammoth sunflowers with me. Each morning, often during that liminal space between sleeping and waking, he'd show up at my door with a triplicate of singsongy hellooooos and invite himself in to play guitar and feed catnip to Blake. When Luke witnessed our interaction for the first time, he found it achingly cute. The boy's roommates, however, were less impressed. He was calling my name in his sleep and was consequently told to back off.

Two Fridays ago, while I was preparing for my SF getaway, one of his roommates walked by and said, "You know, he looks into your window every time we pass by." That was sweet, I thought, as I returned to watering my wildflowers. Later, in the middle of my composting duties, I spotted him. After the space of two weeks, I spoke.

"Spencer..."

He was on his patio, swimming in his little pool. The cutest, most affectionate look alighted upon me. He held this gaze as if to say, "I did miss you terribly, but I've forgotten the heartbreak of your absence now that we are here again. You look beautiful. When do we plant our sunflowers?"

He sparkled with what I'll fondly dub obese love, though responding with a minimal hello. He's not always the most verbal creature. One of his roommates came out to alert him that dinner was ready. (His roommates, for the record, are his parents and two older brothers.)

It's amazing how much a single look can teach you, and, since Spencer is five, he is better able to transmit this etheric knowledge than most people my age. Children don't have the walls that adults do. There aren't years of hurt to excavate. They are present and respond to your presence. Being his first crush is not merely flattering; it is a blessing. If I am ever wondering what an admirer thinks of me, and I often am, I have only to recall that blushed, shimmery innocence of someone who clearly finds me fascinating, comparing this with the gaze of the suitor in question.

Another reminder of love's ease and simplicity showed up two days later, when my friend and I stopped by her local Kwik-E-Mart. The clerk's long-haired chihuahua pup quickly attached himself to me. He licked every part of my face and softly dug his paws into my shoulder blade, not wishing to let go. After thirty-eight licks, his owner became jealous and pried him off of me while feigning a smile. The puppy's purity and intensity is exactly the energy I am after. Nothing forced, nothing armored.

While children and animals aren't the most sought-after co-stars in Hollywood, I find they make delightful teachers. Other formidably cool single chicas can do like I do, and those of you in a relationship can do this as well: soak up and radiate the true love in this world that lies outside dating and marriage--friendship, flora, fauna, and beyond. We're less invested in conventional romantic payoffs when we keep the real stuff close at hand...and we're less invested in rules and results altogether when immersed in the romance of ourselves.

Turn yourself on,
margot

Flushing toxic chemicals and relationships from your body

Because I've received a lot of questions about my second official cleanse, I thought I'd go into a little more detail for those inquiring minds. My first, the Master Cleanse, brought me to my current way of eating. After completion, my skin was glowing, everything was brilliant, and the only (food) items I wanted in my mouth were crunchy vegetables and juicy fruits, so I went raw. It was very natural, like falling in love, and I've never been happier.

I decided to enhance that happiness through deeper cleansing and began the Ejuva program. The first week was easy: a single round of herbs plus three meals, although, for most people, the meals are decidedly abnormal. They have to be raw vegan meals with organic fruit, vegetables, and freshly pressed juices. Week 2 was a bit harder, fruit for breakfast and a salad for dinner, accompanied by 2 herbal rounds. I also had to play three shows during this time. Fairly exhausting but also fun, especially the Highland Park Music Fest, where we photographed with cute little Erynne. Week 3 sucked at first, offering only one meal per day and 3 rounds of herbs. My late lunch consisted of a large salad, which isn't usually enough to satiate me, but I got used to it surprisingly quickly and quite liked it. I even had enough energy for a quick getaway to SF to watch my dear friend play one of her first shows with her new band. She was so cute and capable. We ate at my fave Bay Area restaurant, Cafe Gratitude. The patio was earthy and beautiful, reminding me of Big Sur, and the food was tres yummers.

Cut to this week, the meal-less one, which began with a rather crippling Monday, most likely due to a scanty (for me) 5 hours of sleep and the prospect of only juice plus 4 rounds of herbs, whose smell was making me rather ill. Once I got some juice in me, I felt way better. Orange-pomegranate was my first concoction. Mmm. I proceeded to make some vitamin D by the pool and had Luke test my blueberries for me, relegated to liquids. He said they were ripe and sweet but also hot and therefore not enjoyable. Well, they were in the sun. What did he expect? He said I should pick some and put them in the fridge. This reminded me of that wonderful William Carlos Williams poem:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

Sans cool scrumptious fruit, I still felt like a million bucks on Tuesday, when I procured some deliciousness from Beverly Hills Juice. That place is amazing. I'd always wanted to visit, but it's kind of hard to spot. It's on Beverly just east of Orlando. I had tangelo juice that blew my mind. I went back yesterday and bought enough for today, which is Day 4 of my juice fast. I feel reasonably well, despite the fact that I had a fight with a mean boy from my past and was forced to reiterate, this time in even stronger language, that he never talk to me again, and I think I feel great today because I meant it. I'm stoked that this cleanse has become a spiritual detox, just like my first, and that both times I found myself pressured to fully let go of that meanie. Clearly, the universe wants him flushed from my system. My brave words yesterday will accomplish what pouring lemonade on his head at a party nine months ago somehow didn't. Now he can join my beet-colored eliminations in the toilet.

Oprah is on a vegan cleanse, too. I was so excited to hear of it that I posted a really long note to her message boards. Back to music and apple-blackberry juice. Oh, my nerdiness! You know you love it... ;)

The heel that has crushed me

Our dear fan Alex wrote recently of his interest in learning the origin of our name. The short answer is that it came out of my enduring obsession with word, symbol, meaning, energy, and color.

The long answer is that it started with a childhood love of all things purple. Most of my outfits featured some shade of it. It was royalty and eccentricity, defiance and gorgeousness. Grape juice was sensational. The blueberries in the muffins were beautiful and delicious. The invitations to most of my solar return celebrations (birthdays) were purple. The Color Purple will make you cry. It's a magical, transmutative color. J. Mascis noted this alchemical quality when he declared that purple amps just sound better, and he's right, especially if it's a purple Vox. This color and I have a lot of history. At times, though, I have put purple on hold to experiment with other colors, but I always come back eventually.

Luke said that choosing a name would naturally be my responsibility. Initially, when pressed to find one, I got lost in my anger over the fact that I had to label my past, present, and future endeavors in a clever fashion that hinted at our flavor. As an art-for-art's sake gal, I wasn't eager to negotiate the intersection of our sacred art with the commerce outside. I wished I were a solo project, so I could just be my name. Then I started asking Luke questions. What is our intention? How do we feel? Why are we doing this? We aimed to create music of emotional authenticity and power in such a way that could offer catharsis and accelerate healing in its listeners.

At the time, I was deeply involved in natural healing modalities and spirituality, so I decided to thumb through some of my books, spending considerably more time on one by Hildegard von Bingen. The medieval abbess had been an inspiration to me since I first learned of her work as a healer, composer, poet, scientist, philosopher, and visionary (this is the abbreviated list, if you can believe it.) According to her, violets could check the melancholy of anyone oppressed with a sad mind, making them happy and making their breathing healthy. Ah, I liked it!

Violet. "The sky was all violet," and there was that "ocean of violets in bloom." Prince clearly digs purple, and Courtney Love must have an appreciation for it, but Frank Black's interest in the shade is quite serious, as his "Violet" is entirely devoted to fleshing out various aspects of its awesomeness, not least among them its role as the representative color of the crown chakra. This is the point at the top of your head that aligns you with divine guidance. A cool color, literally and beyond. A lovely fit.

So I had violet, but I needed a mode of presentation. In an interview, Sarah McLachlan referred to her songs as little rooms. A neat idea. Little rooms are basically boxes, I thought. Box. There's the larynx, the voice box, that houses the vocal cords. There's also the miniature room in your mouth, a tiny church with the sweeping palatopharyngeal arch as its ceiling that helps produce vocal tone. For my inner social critic, however, box was not just the song, the room, or the voice, but it was also a means of delivering a commodity to the world. Many modern items seem to arrive in a box. Why not us? Thus, box married violet. A divinely inspired mode of communication meant to serve the emotional transformation of its listeners. The name resonated with me, and the other bandmates thought it was swell. Not surprisingly, violet boxes had been around me the whole time. I found that, when observing my primary musical spaces, there they were. I wrote in my bedroom between violet walls, I sang on the freeway in my violet car, and, in our rehearsal space, a square of violet-painted wood was on the wall. It wasn't our decoration; it had been hanging there since we started renting, but I hadn't noticed.

That was a really long answer. Are you sorry you asked, Alex?

I'll close with the words of Mark Twain: "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it." A lot of our songs have that crushed element, but, increasingly, they are searching for a means to forgive, and, more and more, we are becoming the sweetness that is gleaned from the various glorious messes that have been made.